Zuiderdam MegaVoyage 2018-2019, Kiel/Lübeck, Germany, Part 1 of 2

Today, we arrived in Kiel, Germany and took the Ship’s transfer to Lübeck. Lübeck was a 90-minute drive from Rostock. Lübeck is a charming Hanseatic style town of century old red brick buildings with many Church spires and lush parks. Some of our top highlights and must-see places of this charming medieval gem that we visited where: the Holsten Gate a very impressive entrance to Lübeck’s beautiful Altstadt (Old Town) has a unique pair of round towers sitting on a large archway entrance, a lasting reminder of Lübeck’s rich medieval history; the old Salt Warehouses are located next to the Holstein Gate are a reminder of Lübeck Medieval trading history. We walked to the center of Old Town the Market Square. The market square in Lübeck is dominated by the Town Hall, the Rathaus. The oldest parts date back to the 13th century. Unfortunately, the predicted rain materialized and we made a detour to St. Peters Church Tower for good view of the city, and its surroundings. We made a quick nip into Café Niederegger, the café is famous for its marzipan. We made our way to St. Mary’s Church to see the world’s largest mechanical organ and the church bells embedded into the floor following the Allied bombings of World War II. Across the street from the cathedral was the Buddenbrook House, a Museum to writer Thomas Mann. Next, we made our way to the Burgtor, the historic castle gate and the monastery. On our return towards the river we past the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, cutting down the many alleys we made are way to the banks of the Trave River for a walk about before returning to the bus for our return to the ship. Despite the rain we made good use of the 3 hours on our own in Lübeck...well worth a visit. Another great day!  I decided to go out to the forward deck for our departure from Kiel, it was supposed to be very scenic….  I was not disappointed, it was a lovely sail out with some impressive monuments along the way.  First, we saw the Möltenort U-Boat Memorial, a monument commemorating the soldiers who died serving in U-Boat units.  The second monument was the Laboe Naval Memorial memorializing the dead of WWI and WWII.  It even had a WWII era German U-Boat, U-995…  pretty cool!  Wonderful sail out!