Diana and Brian's Holidays: Hamburg and Belgium day one Traveling to Hamburg

We arrived in London on the 5 July and booked in to the Euston Premier Inn for the night before going for a wander around the area mainly to decide where to eat and seeing just how far away we were from St Pancras Station for our departure in the morning. We ended up in a nice little Italian restaurant almost opposite the hotel .

Next morning we made our way to the Eurostar terminal and caught a train to Brussels Midi.

All went well until about one minute before arrival when the train stopped and waited for 20 minutes before doing the final few yards into the station. By now the weather had taken a turn for the worse and it was tipping it down, but we didn’t need to leave

the station having meat balls for lunch in one of the many eating establishments . I was rather taken by their perpetual calendar.

In the afternoon we caught the train to Cologne arriving in the middle of a Pride Carnival so the place was heaving. We had bit of a problem finding the hotel which was actually round the back of the Cathedral.
The Hotel was very good, although the shower arrangement was interesting, standing in the shower you could look into the bedroom. The water pressure in the shower on full almost took your skin off and the breakfast next day was to die for .


The view from the shower into the bedroom	Although the bathroom is the glass shower cubical	separate from the bedroom extends into the room

Next morning after a lovely breakfast it was back to the station and a train to Hamburg. It was fine when we set off but we were soon back in the rain, thankfully when we reached Hamburg it had stopped. We had booked a hotel just down the

road from the station and although 4 star it wasn’t a patch on last night, no bar, no restaurant, you couldn’t even get a coffee. You had to sign up and give credit card details for Wi-Fi with assurance it was free. Thankfully Halifax stopped the £36 pound they tried to take without me knowing for a video service. The rooms were OK and the location very central. We wandered off for a look round, to get our bearings and have a beer. We eyed up a restaurant for the evening but when we got there it was cash only, no cards. So we had to look elsewhere as I didn’t have enough on me, ending up at a very interesting place just down the road with a very nautically themed décor with everything covered in model galleons etc.