June 16, 2024
Iconic Hamburg
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Tom and his boyfriend Stephan gave me the Iconic Hamburg tour on Saturday. Hamburg is known as an important port city, but it is not right on the North Sea, it is accessed via the Elbe River. The above are taken from steeple overlook of the landmark ,18th Century, St. Michael's Church. It was super windy, es ist windig, at the top, but the views were worth it. The church was originally built in 1648 but destroyed by lighting, in 1750. It was rebuilt in 1751 to 1762 and destroyed a second time by fire in 1906! This third church was rebuilt from 1907 to 1912 and has a building restoration going on now with the campaign for "heavenly helpers" and golden hardhats on their statues that fade in and out of vision, depending on the angle you look at them. Clever!
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How many letters are in the German alphabet?
There are 30. The four extra are a, o & u with the double dots over them ( and are pronounced eh, ouh, & uuh) and the funky B ( which is prounounced as ss).
Another great day exploring the South Pacific ! Today as soon as our ship docked in Honiara , and we were cleared by customs, I was off with 9 other residents, to get in 2 small speed boats and head out to Simon's Nature Reserve in the Solomon Islands . It was about an hour long ride across the Iron Bottom Sound but so worth it to experience this special place!
Fun fact - Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the World! It is estimated that there are at least 826 Papuan languages. Some are spoken by just a handful of people, while others by 100,000. (Thanks - Basia & Wikipedia for sharing this information).
Tully is a small sugar mill town about 2 hours south of Cairns and we traveled here with a group of about 20 other residents to go white water rafting in the Tully River at the Gorge in the National Park. It is the beginning of the wet season and the river was running at a high level, so the rapids were class 4 out of 5. We had some trepidation, but were excited for the adventure! OMG so much FUN!!