On our way home from the Baltic Sea, we decided to break up this eight-hour trip to Frankfurt by spending the night in Celle (Lower Saxony). What a beautiful town. Celle, obviously, did not get bombed during WWII. This town has the most half-timbered houses I have ever seen. Population: 71,000.
Spending the night there was an impromptu decision and so the Atlantik Hotel was the first hotel I inquired within. The hotel director, Les from Scotland, struck me as a very friendly chap and when he showed me the Elvis-themed breakfast room, I knew we’d found something unusual.
Hotel Atlantik, Celle
Les’s hotel running motto stands true: “There are no strangers here, just friends waiting to be met.” I made new friends in the beer garden out back, in the breakfast room, and in the lounge.
breakfast room
I can recommend the town of Celle for a visit. The over 400 half-timbered houses had been built between the 16th – 19th century. From Frankfurt to Celle, it takes about four hours by car.
Celle is also located on the German Timber-Frame Road. This road totals almost 3,000 km in length, winding through Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
Half-timbered houses in Celle
Hotel Atlantik: http://atlantikhotel.com/
German Timber-Frame Road Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Timber-Frame_Road
On a different note… one of the hotel helpers told us how busy Celle got during the 1987 Reforger (Return of Forces to Germany) Exercise, conducted mainly in Lower Saxony. I believe he said about 100,000 visitors came.
A friend of the man we met in Celle was apparently involved in an attempt to recover 7 multimillion dollar M1 Abrams tanks, each weighing about 60 tons, that had sunk into a bog. Their efforts were unsuccessful, and the man believed that the tanks are still buried there.
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