Sightseeing Boats and Harbor Tours

Hamburg is, first and foremost, a maritime city--as it has been since the days of the Hanseatic League. The Port of Hamburg is Europe's third largest, and the biggest in Northern Europe.

It's also the main transshipment port for Scandinavia and the Baltic, with goods from China and other distant countries being unloaded from huge containerships and reloaded onto smaller vessels for delivery to Sweden, Poland, the Baltic States, Russia, and other northern countries without deepwater ports on the Atlantic or North Sea.

Maritime Circle Line is the aquatic version of a "hop on, hop off" sightseeing bus: Your ticket entitles you to a day of travel between seven museums and other tourist locations in the harbor--among them, the BallinStadt Emigration Museum, which is a "must see" attraction for visitors from the New World.

The Kapitän Prüsse is a vintage sightseeing boat that departs from the St. Pauli Landungsbrücken. Seating is mostly on wooden benches, but the trip is fun, especially at night. (This tour is best if you're familiar with the harbor, because the narration is in German only.)

For a different type of boat trip, enjoy a cruise of Hamburg's city lakes with the White Alster Fleet. From April to September, the boats stop at nine piers around the Alster, and your ticket entitles you to get on and off during your circuit of the lakes.

(The same company offers tours that go beyond the Alster to the Elbe Waterways or the canals that extend from the Ausseralster.)

If you feel the urge to get out of town, the high-speed catamarans Halunder Jet and San Gwann will take you to Helgoland, a German island in the North Sea. The vessels are operated by FRS Helgoline, which has daily departures from piers 3/4 at the St-Pauli Landungsbrücken.

More harbor photos:

A Maritime Circle Line "hop on, hop off" shuttle boat visits the BallinStadt Emigration Museum landing.

A huge containership is loaded at the Tollerort freight terminal.

A floating crane cruises down the Elbe.

Shipyard workers are dwarfed by a massive ship's hull.

A smaller vessel appears to levitate inside a dry dock.

These two photos were taken during a nighttime harbor tour aboard the vintage boat Kapitän Prüsse.

Downtown Hamburg, as seen from a harbor ferry during the day. (The city has few skyscrapers, so the Fernsehturm or TV tower and one of Hamburg's signature church towers rise high above the surrounding buildings.) 

HADAG's harbor ferries are the best sightseeing value on the water.

You can ride the HADAG harbor ferries with a standard HVV ticket. (This easy-to-use ticket machine is at the Altona-Fischmarkt landing, shown below:

Are you in a mood to go farther afield? Book passage on FRS Helgoline's Halunder Jet to the island of Helgoland. The high-speed catamaran departs from the St-Pauli Landungsbrücken in central Hamburg.

When you've had your fill of salt water, head for the Inner and Outer Alster, where "hop on, hop off" boats offer tours of the lakes and connecting waterways.