Today was always going to be one of the highlights of the holiday, a trip to Miniatur Wunderland! It's also the reason why we're taking a rather circular northern route to the Czech Republic, no one would go via Hamburg if speed or shortest distance was their main prerogative. For those who haven't heard about this attraction, it's a number of incredibly detailed and expansive model railways, plus a more recently added working airport where aircraft take off and land. I don't believe it will ever be truly finished, there's currently nine different areas with more to come and you can see the work in progress on the new models.
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| Forrest and Cub infront of The Elbphilharmonie |
Having read before our trip that there can be long queues to get into Miniatur Wunderland we booked 9-10am entrance tickets and quite miraculously for us we were outside and ready to go in a few minutes before nine. After a quick breakfast in the very good bistro (more on that later), we worked our way around the exhibitions, each one with so much detail you could look at it ten times and every time spot something new. You'll see some of the highlights in the photos below, but I'd recommend taking a look at their website to see the models in action: https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com. You'll also notice the whole site cycles from day to night.
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| A colourful scene from Italy. |
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| The models come to life as night falls. |
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| A replica of the Volksparkstadion, the home of Hamburger SV. |
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| One of the most recent additions, Venice and the Rialto Bridge. |
We took a break for lunch and all had very good freshly prepared pasta from the open kitchen. The seats and tables are laid out like railway carriages and there's a good play area including a mini layout the kids could operate the trains on. We then took a quick second look around everything to get a few photos, although by now whilst Forrest was loving it taking many, many with his own camera (see one of the better ones below), Paloma was starting to flag, so after almost 7-hours from when we first walked in the door, we decided it was time to move on!
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| One of Forrest's photos from today. |
Forrest likes his tunnels, in fact if we're on the drive back to East Anglia and he's asleep we have strict instructions to wake him up for the two tunnels on the M25, so Amber thought he'd enjoy a walk through the Elbe Tunnel. Built back in 1911, the tunnel links the main town of Hamburg with the Industrial hub on the south side of the Elbe river. Instead of a more traditional slope down then up the other side, the tunnel is rather level at 24m below the surface with a number of large vehicle sized lifts at each end. Today the tunnel is mixed use: cars, cycles and pedestrians, although from 6pm onwards no cars are allowed so we decided to wait until then to walk through.
With a little bit of time to spare we took the Hamburg equivalent of the Circle line in London the long way around to Landungsbrücken so to catch a ferry over to the south side to walk back north through the tunnel. We may have just missed the 1715 ferry as we dashed to the departure point arriving at exactly that time with no sign of any boats. However, we were certainly waiting in the correct place for the scheduled last of the day at 1730, but after waiting and waiting until almost 6pm it just never turned up. This left us with a decision to make, either to abort the tunnel plan or come up with a different route. Since we were so close to where we needed to be we decided on taking the Musical Express across the Elbe. This took us over the river to the two theaters showing the Lion King and Mary Poppins where we enjoyed a pretzel snack for tea, but left us with a 15 minute walk through the rather less touristic industrial parts of Hamburg, before reaching the southern portal of the tunnel.
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| Deep under the river in the Elbe Tunnel. |
Ten minutes later we were back on the north shore, having enjoyed the nice cool atmosphere of the Elbe tunnel; the kids also enjoyed testing the acoustics! A quick trip via the S-Bahn and U-Bahn got us back to the hotel for 7:30pm and after a busy day both kids were quickly asleep.
Tomorrow we have the drive south towards the Harz mountains, it should hopefully be a scenic journey the closer we get to Wernigerode, the next stop on our adventure.
Blogged by Matt.
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