Day 3 Of Our Baltic Capitals Cruise - Warnemunde, Germany

Today we woke up, looked out of our balcony window and found ourselves docked in Warnemunde, Germany.

A majority of the people on the ship had booked some sort of excursion to Berlin. Several of these excursions were 12-13 hours long and cost quite a bit of money. It was an approximately 3 hour to Berlin and then another 3 hours return to the ship.

We really did not want to spend our vacation time spending 6 or more hours of a day driving back and forth.

Veronica and I had discussed our options for visiting Germany prior to our leaving for this trip.

We decided to spend our day in the town where the ship docks at...Warnemunde.

As it turned out, we made a great decision.

We had a fantastic time here.

We got off of the ship early and started heading into town. it was about a 10 minute walk from the pier.

On our way to town, we came upon a souvenir store and outside of this store, were these sand sculptures.

They were on display and had been for some time now. I believe that they had been a part of some type of fair

Here is the souvenir store called Pier 7

Here is a ferry that was running people, cars and trucks back and forth from one bank to another all day long starting from before we actually docked in the morning until and past the time we departed the port

Here are the public toilets that we there for our use. Anytime we saw the letters WC, we knew that they were toilets. The WC stands for wash closet.

A sign at the local train station

Now we are starting to arrive into town

They have a canal the goes through town. The have boats lining both sides of this canal. The boats on one side of the canal were used for selling the recently caught fish. They also had fish smokers and "booths" where they sold various goods. When we first got there, the place was very quiet but it didn't take long for the smell of smoking fish and other goodies to bring the locals out.

They also had restaurants and shops lining the pedestrian walkways that ran adjacent to the canal.

The fish did not get any fresher than what they were selling this morning. Many of the fish we saw were still flopping around as the locals were making their choices for that nights upcoming dinner.

Here is one of the fish smokers that I mentioned

Various types of smoked fish. You can click on the picture to enlarge any of them.

This was somewhat of a specialty for this particular area...fresh fish sandwiches. The fish appeared to be raw in these sandwiches.

Here is Veronica standing on a bridge that ran over the canal.

Here is a street full of shops and cafes that run adjacent to the pedestrian walkway and the canal.

It was really quiet when we got there but by the afternoon, it was wall to wall people. This town was absolutely packed with locals and tourists alike.

It was Saturday so most locals were off from work. 

It seems that most of the shops and cafes had living quarters above them. A lot of the living quarters had really nice balconies and patios in front of them...it was really nice and the town was extremely clean

This area is considered one of the most popular beach resort areas in Europe

They had these type of beach "chairs" everywhere...even outside of the cafes.

These chairs have a drawer to store items, a foot rest that pop out from the chair and they provide covering and shade on 3 sides. 

This was the boardwalk area

As we were walking around, Veronica and I found another bakery. We always were able to find these type of bakeries/cafes in every city or town we visited. We always got some bread or something good to nibble on. They seemed to have different bakeries on every street corner. The smells filling the air outside of these places were soooo good.

I love fresh baked bread and rolls, so I had a great time here.

We ended up finding an open air market in town. It was a little deeper into town so not many tourist found this place. There were a lot of locals at this market and they sold anything and everything...from fresh cut chickens and meat, smoked meats, jams and jellies, clothes, fruits, vegetables and sandwiches.  

This vendor had smoked sausages, smoked pork and smoked bacon 

They even had a vendor selling women's undergarmets

Official No Dog Poop Area stone

 

We found this neat telephone booth along side of the road along with a cigarette machine

The menu of a Chinese restaurant that was in town...menu is written in German

Another bakery cafe that was in another part of town. We walk all over this town and found all kinds of great sights. Looks like two seasoned travelers taking a well deserved break

 

Nothing like a mug full of Latte or Espresso to perk up ones spirits. Veronica had ordered one but the girl misunderstood and gave her two cups. I tried it but it was way too strong for me.

Yes...that is me...the well seasoned traveler that I am and please notice the camera and finger on the magic button...always at the ready for whenever a photo opportunity arises

This windmill housed a restaurant inside of it

This photo was taken from a boat that we boarded to take an hour cruise around the port area

Sailboats were everywhere outside of the harbor

We saw many of the really large ferries all along our voyage route and entering and leaving many of the ports that we were in. We mainly saw 3-4 various ferry companies running these ferries. These ferries have cabin for those that are staying for an overnight ferry along with taking trucks, cars, storage containers and anything else that they could fit in the hold of the ship. These ships were as big, if not bigger that our cruise ship. 

Here is the afty area of our ship...the NCL Sun. Our cabin is the one that is just to the right of the large balcony on the top left floor....the floor below the tent covered area.

Actually that tent covers the "Great Outdoors" eating area. It is a buffet where you cabin eat outside depending on the weather.

We will never get a room that is directly under this eating area again. Every morning at around 5AM, you can hear the workers moving tables and chairs around above you. When it is nice out, you can hear a lot of noise where people are eating outside and there is constant noise from the chairs moving.  

A new ship being built in the area. This was seen during our hour cruise through the port area.

We saw quite a number of these windmill farms..used as a form of alternative energy. Copenhagen and Sweden had a number of them too. 

The beach area got crowded in the afternoon. This was taken from our hour long port cruise as was many of the following photos

Guess what...they even had a McDonalds in town. You can enlarge the photo to get a better view of the prices that are in Euros

At the end of the day, after all of the passengers had returned to the ship, Veronica and I were in our cabin. It was getting close to the time that the boat was supposed to leave the pier and head to our next port of call. Tallinn, Estonia.

Veronica and I heard what sound like opera music being piped through a loud speakers system.
We went out on our balcony and started listening to the music and watched as the Paul Olsen Cruise line ship, the Balmoreal, leave the pier just before us.
As the Balmoreal was leaving, we saw many of these small tour ships and many personal boats floating in the water and sounding their horns as the Balmoreal was leaving.

Then it was our turn to leave the pier and port area. I will never forget the sights that we saw as we were leaving the port of Warnemunde.

There was a bunch of these boats following along side and just behind our ship.
Then what we saw really was touching....lining both of the banks that made the chanel entering the port, there were a couple of thousand residents of Warnemunde lined up along those banks and there were all cheering and clapping as we were leaving the port.
Our ship was the last one to visit Warnemunde for this cruising season and this was the towns way of saying "thank you" for visiting.

These folks must have been out the for quite a while as both the Balmoreal and our ship left the port.

The small boats that were following us were sounding their horns, the people were clapping, waving and cheering. Passengers on our ship were clapping, waving and whistling back to those on the banks.
It truly was a sight to see.

And that was not the end of it...as we were slowly making our way out of the port, the residents put on a really nice fireworks display.

Warnemunde is truly a special place to visit and who knows, maybe one of these days we might return.
Based on what we saw, I am sure that we would be welcomed with open arms and smiling faces.


To view all of the photographs that were taken in Warnemunde, Germany that did not make it on this blog entry, please feel free to view this slide show. You can actually click on the slide show itself to enlarge the photographs.