Hamburg to Einbeck

Today we drove from Hamburg to Einbeck. This is roughly a 2.5 hour drive. Everything is closed again today in Germany. Our checkout time at the hotel was midday. After a sleep in, I decided to go for a walk while Helen slept in.

Hamburg was still cold at 2 degrees with a gentle drizzle across the city. Knowing on Christmas Eve the central railway station was open, especially including places to buy lunch, I decided to walk there and check it out. The walk was nearly 5km return, just over an hour.

On the way I was able to take in more of the Hamburg area we are staying in called Speicherstadt which are historical warehouses along a sequence of canals. They are all beautiful brick buildings and there are many bridges connecting the roads across the canals.

The railway station was open, it's huge and very busy on Boxing Day. Plenty of places open to eat. 

Surprisingly apart from the various food shops all through its concourse, it also had a huge foodcourt hiding off to the side that was better than any foodcourt we have at home.

I returned to the hotel through the main shopping district before connecting back with the Speicherstadt. 

Our hotel:

After returning it was time to shower, pack and vacate the hotels. We drove to the railway station and had burgers from lunch, at the same Burger Hero we had on Christmas eve. By being open to feed our bellies, they are our hero! We then drove to Einbeck via autobahns, bypassing Hanover.  Today's speed record in our Peugeot rental car was 196 km/h, we could not quite crack 200 km/h because people pull out in front of us slowing us down.

We arrived mid afternoon at our hotel. Now some explanation about why we are here. We came to Einbeck, a small town south of Hanover, to visit PS Speicher which is a car and motorcycle museum. Notable is that it contains the largest collection of German motorcycles in the world. Actually it has a number of exhibits spread across buildings, even across town, not all together.

We booked in the Freigeist Hotel which we knew was nearby PS Speicher. Actually they are related, right next door.  A wall inside the hotel has scooters on it.

The hotel restaurant is located next door as a part of the museum. Both are very modern with an industrial aesthetic. We went for a drive around town, almost every restaurant was closed or fully booked, and no supermarkets were open. So we went back to the hotel and had dinner there. It was quite expensive, but very nice.