For the second leg of our holiday we would fly from Amsterdam to Hamburg. We got up at around 4 am and got a taxi to the airport from Muiden. No buses were running that early. The taxi cost around €65 but we didn’t really have any other choice.

My cousins live in Hamburg and we had said last year that at some point we would visit. We wanted to tie the two holidays together somehow and save flying out another time as my girlfriend only gets set holidays so we wanted to make the most of it.

The weather was still very warm and on the first day we did a boat trip on the big lake in Hamburg called the Alster Lake. This was very peaceful and there was a nice breeze. The boat we took was a genuine vintage steam driven boat and was very interesting. If you want to go shopping then there are lots of high street brands and promiment shopping outlets, intertwined with restaurants and bars. You can spend a lot of time here just walking and relaxing.

The rest of the time for the most part we just relaxed, visited the village of Volksdorf where my cousins live.

On the last day before we were due to fly back to Amsterdam, I went on an 18km bike ride to the big cemetery, Ohlsdorf Cemetery, which has its own roads and landscaped gardens and avenues. It’s really big if you look at it on a map. This was exhausting as the weather was still warm but we stopped for an ice. I was quite pleased as I can’t remember the last time I got on a bike. Need to do that again soon!

Overall we had a really good time. In the end we were both pretty exhausted. We went back to Holland for a few days before flying home to England. Until the next time….