Georgengarten and Street Art in Hannover

Walking through Hannover on our way to the Herrenhausen Gardens and Palace, we find ourselves walking down a street of fabulous sculptures (Brühlstrasse) along the banks of the River Leine.

 Sculpture along the river

 Street art nearby

Soon we reach the Georgengarten containing the Herrenhausen Allee, a 1.85 km (1.1 mile) road built in 1726 through the gardens to connect the city with the royal palace.

Herrenhausen Allee

Half-way along the allee, the buildings of the Leibniz University Hannover look out on the park, with a tram stop right at the main entrance.

Leibniz University Hannover

Strolling up the Herrenhausen Allee through the park, we get great views of meadows, lakes, canals, and plantings of the Georgengarten, now part of the Herrenhausen Gardens located at the far end.

 Paths and meadows of Georgengarten

Arriving in Hannover, Germany

We arrive in Hannover on the train from Frankfurt a little after midnight, scurry to our hotel, and start to explore the next day.  We find a modern city, full of sculptures, an intriguing old town, and a fabulous tram system for getting around.

Hannover is the capital of the German state of Lower Saxony and is about 350 km (250 miles) north of Frankfurt.  Founded in medieval times, Hannover became a city in the 13th century and is now a major crossing point for both north-south and east-west highways and rail lines and hosts many commercial trade fairs with the largest fairground in the world.

 Hannover train station, multi-level street leading to station

 Opera and shops across the street

 Church skeleton across from museum

 "New" city hall next to modern Nord/LB building

Next to the new city hall, Maschpark is 10 hectares (25 acres) of calm and tranquility.  Created in 1900, the park has remained the same since then, a great example of late 19th century German garden art.

Maschpark

The River Leine runs through town, in front of the city hall, with parks and walkways along its banks.

 River Leine

Hannover's old town was rebuilt after the Second World War, relocating parts of old buildings, principally the facades, from all over the city into the new old town, a picturesque area of narrow streets and half-timbered buildings.

 Old town

On the edge of old town, the Kreutzkirche was originally build in 1333 and the interior was restored after the war.

Kreutzkirche

Hannover is a charming town and we're looking forward to more exploring over the next few days.

Easter Weekend Dining

With our new Covid-19 life under "stay-at-home" orders, we are inspired to explore more home-based culinary options.  For the Easter holiday, we have several days of inspiration (and some of just plain laziness).

We start the long holiday weekend by supporting a local restaurant's take-out-only service with pizza, some old favorites from East End:  Magic Carpet (béchamel sauce, aged gruyere, mushrooms, garlic, sage, and bacon) and Meat Combo (red sauce, pepperoni, sweet italian sausave, bacon, and house cheese blend).

 Pizzas

The next day, we try a recipe from a new cookbook by one of our favorite sources of recipes, Melissa Clark of the New York Times:  Dinner in French, Artichokes with Feta-Dill Dressing.  We follow this with shrimp burgers with homemade tartar sauce that we had recently seen on the TV show Cook's Country.  While we prepare this, we also start a leg of lamb for the next day with a marinade of lemon juice, orange zest, anchovies, basil, and olive oil.  We insert spoonfuls of the marinade into inch-deep (2.5 cm) cuts in the leg and rub the remainder over the outside.  Then it's into the refrigerator for the leg for a day.

Shrimp burgers, artichoke

Lamb leg, marinating

For Easter, we roast the leg of lamb, in red wine with Kalmata olives, basting occasionally, for about an hour and a half while we prepare the accompanying dishes:  Three Cheese Pommes Anna (layers of sliced russet potatoes with Gruyère, Parmigiano Reggiano, and Pecorino Romano (along with butter, rosemary, garlic, nutmeg, panko bread crumbs, and sliced onions) and Walnut-Mortadella Green Beans.  We start with Pizettes (con Pomodoro e Mozzarella, con Gorgonzola e Funghi, and our own olive oil/anchovy version), from Italian Street Food by Paola Bacchia.

 Pizettes

 Easter table, leg of lamb ready to serve

 Potatoes, green beans

Dinner is served!

Following Easter, we make a lighter meal from Dinner in French, Savory Mushroom Soup, with five or six different varieties of mushrooms, sauteed in butter with shallots, combined with garlic, tomato paste, thyme, rosemary, coriander, paprika, sea salt, and chickpea flour.  What a great way to finish this dining odyssey. 

Mushroom soup

Cooking is our passion and it's helping keep us sane during this time, but we're also sensitive to the needs of others and take time during the holiday to donate to our local food bank and to local and international medical organizations.  Also, T&W, a Chinese vendor with whom we have worked for many years and with whom we have many great friendships, asked if we would like some medical face masks and we arranged their donation to two local hospitals.

Donations

On a lighter note, to distract us while working at home, we added an audience and several ring-toss games from Sunnylife, an Australian beach toy manufacturer whose products we first encountered at Printemps, one of the grand department stores of Paris.

Distractions