This has been a long day. I have a feeling that it has a lot to do with yesterday not ending very early.

Anyway, I'm sitting in the restaurant at my hotel in Lübeck. I've ordered mutton and for dessert Rote Grütze. The camera is in my room, so there won't be any pictures. The meal could very well be worth photographing, though. This place breathes posh, from the rude maitre d' to the fake eighteenth century portraits on the walls. So far this hotel has been decidedly underwhelming. Posh, expensive and not very well appointed.

By golly! A young member of staff just came out with a spiel about how the kitchen would like to greet me with a small starter, a vegetable soup. I wonder if this means they still need to cut the poor lamb's throat.

And here are two herbal bread sticks and some Quark. Mmm, delicious.

But this wasn't really meant to be a blow-by-blow account of my meal. I was going to talk about the rest of my day. So, I set out at about 10.30 this morning. My first goal was Soltau, with its spa.

I arrived around noon and when I emerged two and a half hours later, I was relaxed like a wet noodle. Definitely worth less than €30 including a half hour massage. I'm not going to bore you with an account of all the pools with and without bubbles and of various temperatures and sizes. Ditto for the saunas, some with herbs, some with steam and varying in temperature between luke warm and hot as hell. Suffice it to say that apart from the massage, what I enjoyed the most was the 36°C bubble pool.

Afterwards I was so sleepy that despite having a Coke, I had a nap in a roadside car park. One of the things I like about Germany is its relatively low crime rate.

And then I arrived at my hotel. It's in a small village called Oberbüssau outside Lübeck. After I had settled in I went for a walk, camera in hand. I got some nice rural pictures, including some where you can see the famous Holsteintor in the distance. There's also a lock on a canal not far from here. I watched a small sail boat going through it. The lock was germanically efficient but apart from that, the area really is quite bucolic.



Update at 21.45: The mutton was quite nice. Nothing to wax lyrical about but quite passable. The Rote Grütze is like no Rote Grütze I've ever had. For starters I don't think this one came out of a box. There are actual berries in it. In fact it seems to consist mainly of berries. I'm slightly worried about what my tummy will make of them.

mood: hungry