Train Stop and Boat Ride in Luebeck (#42)

We needed a connection in Luebeck and with our Eurail pass it’s easy to change your tickets. So we decided to have a fun stop to see the Medieval city of Luebeck. Apparently Napoleon stayed here for 7 years.

We walked past this amazing two tower structure.

This building is leaning more than you would imagine. Like other canal cities, these building rest on wood pilings. We did not have enough time to get more history of this building.

We walked past a long line of locals waiting to get into the Circus. We were trying to remember the last time we went or heard about a circus in our area.

We decided to take a one hour boat trip that would go around the medieval city of Luebeck.

As on the other boat cruise, you are given a menu and you can order a drink to be served to you on your cruise. We tried the sparkling Apple juice.

We had a particulary funny tour guide who spoke entirely in German. We had a written guide sharing all the stops, but the boat operator decided to go the opposity direction. So we tried to read the guide, use our Google translate for what he was actually saying, and see the sights.

Overall we had a great trip, but it was a lot of work trying to translate.

We believe the guide was saying that this was a famous site with the 7 church spires.

There was some type of boat race going in front of the cruise ship.

We learned more about Luebeck and it's role as a Hanseatic city (trading city with Hamburg) at our next stop.

From wikipedia:

In the 14th century, Lübeck became the "Queen of the Hanseatic League", being by far the largest and most powerful member of that medieval trade organization. In 1375, Emperor Charles IV named Lübeck one of the five "Glories of the Empire", a title shared with Venice, Rome, Pisa, and Florence.

We also had bit of a debacle. Laura found a digital storaage locker that would take our luggage while we walked around. Ted was uneasy and decided to carry his luggage. Laura left her two bags, followed instructions, and on returrn the locker wouldn't open. Ted found the DHL guy, but he couldn't open the locker that were shared by this luggate storage system. After a frantic hour and emails with the customer service and tons of help and support from the DHL, we got our luggage back and went on a later train. So glad to have our Eurail flexibility.

Luebeck (a 4 hour stop)

Pros: Cute city with much history, English translation available, would be a great 2 night stop

Cons: Not enough time