Lübeck and Travemünde

Saturday, March 10 dawned a warm beautifully sunny day. Sun is rare in northern Germany, so we have to take advantage of it when it is there. My wonderful husband spent the week researching where to go for our first venture out of Hamburg. He got me into the car without telling me where we were going, plugged in our travel buddy Garmin, and we were off.

We had our first Autobahn experience. From my perspective, it wasn't as big of a deal as I had thought. They are very much like an American interstate just with people passing you really fast. One thing that amused me was the deer crossing signs everywhere. There aren't fences or barbed wire on the side of the A-bahn like the I69 (as if that helped me any!). Right behind the first one that we saw, there were 3 deer in a field. Glad I wasn't driving there!

Ken took me to a small town about an hour away on the banks for the Baltic Sea called Travemünde. It was a beautiful area. You can choose to walk on the beach or on top of the cliff through the woods. I would love to come out there during the summer.

We ate lunch there and then headed to Lübeck, a historic shipping town on an island in a river. The first thing that you come to is the town gate. It looks like something out of a fairy tale. I can just picture Prince Charming riding his horse up to that gate.

Then the prince would ride into the crowded city market where he would seek to speak with the evil king in order to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. (Ken's probably really rolling his eyes at me as he reads this, so I'd better stop.) I'm posting two picture of the square to give you a few angles. I like the picture on the left because it shows the shields and crests that really give you an old European feel.

The next picture is from Marienkirche, one of the many churches in this small town. These church bells fell during a 1942 bombing raid and were left as a memorial. I don't think that a professional photographer could have gotten as nice of a picture as Ken did here. I love the lighting and framing.

This last picture is for my Dad. These were the first European windmills that I've seen. Not the greatest picture since I took it while driving on the A-bahn, but I'll do better next time!!