Kiel - The Ship Parade

On Saturday morning we got up around 9 so that we could get down to the harbor early enough to check out the ship parade - an event during which all of the sailboats fill the water at once and head out toward the sea. I love waking up with Germans because food and coffee are usually on the top of their priority list. I thought we would just have some bread or something, but they kept bringing more and more food to the table until it was laden with cheese, meat, bread, coffee, strawberries, eggs, and every condiment known to man. Needless to say I was pretty glad we were going out afterward because I got completely stuffed full of wonderful food.

The parks are another of the things I really like here, and we walked through a really beautiful while trekking to the water that morning. When we got the harbor, not too many ships had gone out yet so it was really great to watch as they as started heading toward the sea. There was absolutely every kind of ship, everything from small sailboats to massive ferries heading to Scandinavia. It was really beautiful and the only unfortunate thing was that the wind was coming from a direction that didn't allow the bigger ships to use their sails. Anyway, a few of the pics I took: