Two Americans on a German Resort Island
Trip Start
Jan 07, 2011
1
45
51
Trip End
Aug 01, 2011
Sylt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Sunday, June 26, 2011
I took the regional (free) train to Hannover, then the ICE (fast) train to Hamburg, then the NOB (Nord- Ostsee Bahn or North and Baltic Sea train) to Westerland on the Island of Sylt. My last train was canceled so I had to take the next one, which was 30 minutes late. Not a great day for transportation. Blake's train was so late the train company bought him a taxi to drive to Germany and catch the train onto the island (never would've happened in Germany). We got into the tourist town just as the hotel called to ask if we were still coming. We crashed when we got in.
Saturday morning we slept until just before they stopped serving breakfast. After breakfast and showers, we went to the beach. We wandered up and down the beach and collected seashells and got our feet wet in the very cold surf. After a while we sat in a double beach chair (the beach was covered in them) and enjoyed the sights and sounds and some cuddle time.
For lunch we had fish sandwiches. Mine was a herring and Blake had something fried and white, though I didn't know the English name for it. After lunch we got ice cream and went to a souvenir shop to buy little boxes for our seashells. We dropped everything off at the hotel and decided it was too windy to rent bikes. Instead we bought bus tickets to the north end of the island.
We stopped off first at Kampen, about halfway to the northern island of List. We walked out to the western beach in Kampen and saw the Red Cliffs (made of clay). We were looking for the lighthouse but were evidently in the wrong place (it turned out to be in the middle of the small town. Who knew?). We got back on the bus and went up to List where we had dinner. We each decided on the grilled fish combination platter (small filets of four different kinds of fish) with roasted potatoes and spinach. Yum. Afterwards we had coffee (Blake had a latte) at a little cafe in List and stopped into our favorite type of store: a candy store. The kind with buckets of candy and scoop. Yum again.
Then we took the bus back into Westerland (where we were staying). There, Blake and I hit the town and sampled a few bars' atmospheres with a few drinks to celebrate Blake's birthday (technically it wasn't until July 2 but I wasn't going to see him then). It was a fun night out.
Sunday we slept relatively late again and took a bus to the southern end of the island this time. In Hoernum we bought tickets for a seal-watching boat tour and got lunch at a seaside stand (currywurst) before boarding. On the boat, they dropped a net off the back of the boat and scooped up a bunch of sea creatures including lively crabs and prickly starfish. Blake liked catching the crabs (they weren't smart enough to evade opposable thumbs) and the little kids surrounding the water table got a kick out of him picking them up and them squirming around.
Back on the island, we walked on the shore a bit more and collected some more seashells before getting back on the bus to Westerland. We decided to try out the spa on the beach there. We got our swimsuits and went in. We tried going in the sauna/hot springs area, but found you were not allowed to wear any clothes inside, so we had to leave. We spent some time in the wave pool, hot tub and water slides (we're almost grown up) before getting sick of having faces splashed with salt water.
We dropped our wet swimsuits at the hotel,then we had dinner at a Munich style restaurant. I had schnitzel and Blake had steak. Walking around afterwards we found a "cheesecake and coffee" combo, of which I drank the coffee and Blake ate the cheesecake.
We sat for a while after dinner on the beach in the late dusk and snuggled in the cool ocean air.
Monday morning we packed everything up and checked out. We caught the train off the island and Blake rode with me for about an hour before he had to transfer across the peninsula towards Denmark and I continued on to Hamburg and home in time for class.
