Boat day in Hamburg

Hamburg is the second biggest city in Germany and has a massive industrial zone and harbor. Which gives great opportunity to have a boat day in Hamburg. The good news is that it is not necessary for people who like the navy and ships. It has its own magic that I believe is for everyone who has an interest in modern architecture.

Start your boat day in Hamburg with cruise

Hamburg is full of canals and interesting architecture – similar to Copenhagen but more industrial. And because there are canals almost everywhere, there are also boats everywhere. So start your day by going to the harbor and ask for cruises. An hour cruise cost usually around 20 euros, and the company is very much just your choice. If you don’t care about the stories that have captain says and don’t speak German, just take any cruise. Most of them are in German, but there are a couple of them per day in English as well.

There are also several variants about how long do you want to cruise around. We took the one for an hour, which was really just about the harbor. The harbor is massive, so it is not like you will get bored. The longer ones are also with harbor but also some industrial areas behind Hamburg.

Cruises are quite informative, you will always get to know what kind of building are you looking at and quite interesting facts about the harbor. Like how big it is, how many ships there are, what are the ships for… And since we are talking about ships, also interesting facts about ships. Like biggest tanker and how much tons they can actually carry.

Overall, I think first it will get you with the extraordinary view of the city and the interesting facts are just cherry on top of the cake. If nothing else, this is the way on how to get an extra view on Elbphilharmonie.

Museum of Maritime

This is something that you cannot miss if you want a proper boat day in Hamburg. Hamburg has a huge international museum of maritime. Full five floors of boats and different stories about them. We went there mainly because it was raining cats and dogs and thought that this is something that will take us about an hour and after we can figure out something else.

Well, it took us about three hours to do the whole museum and there were parts that we basically just passed by. But it is really place where you get to see everything about boats. How people started building, biggest sailors, explanations about different kind of ships… well, but for us girls – they have nice paintings and models of boats.

There is something that fascinated me about the museum. It has about five floors and most of the people assume that Germans themselves would represent themselves there as well. But for about three floors you didn’t really see too many German products or boats in the museum. Then there are glass doors, and behind them, you get to see everything about navy during world wars. And this is where most of the German ships pop out. It almost feels like they would like to say “we are really, really sorry about this guys” in most decent way possible. Because you can, of course, say that you won’t go there and the glass doors sort of show that you don’t have to.

Walk around the harbor

Finish your boat day in Hamburg by a walk around the piers. Even though Hamburg might not be that popular as Berlin, it has some great places in the city center. And since there are canals everywhere, you get to see the boats also everywhere. Or just interesting parts of the city like the warehouse district. It is a peaceful part of town with only fancy restaurants and few bakeries. Also around the harbor, there is a Portuguese part of town with a lot of tapas, that I recommend visiting in case you get hungry. During the summer, harbor could be a great place to hang out around the river and just watch ships come and go.

Like it? Pin it for later!