11. February 2025
Home » Travel » Trip Reports » Exploring Hamburg with the HADAG Public Ferries – Line 61
Other Transportation / Trip Reports

Exploring Hamburg with the HADAG Public Ferries – Line 61

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

In the order of posting the episodes of my trip report of exploring Hamburg Habor (here is my overview posting with my lines 62 & 64 pictures) with public ferries, this posting about line 61 will close my small set of four postings dedicated to this topic. Line 61 is one of the most popular ferry lines for touristic reasons.

 

HADAG Ferries – Route 61 – The Route

At the time of writing Line 61 departs at bridge 2 of the Landungsbrücken. The first two stops Altona (Fischmarkt) and Dockland (Fischereihafen) are equivalent to Line 62 which has been covered in the very first episode. There are significantly less trips you can take with this ferry. Especially in the noon hours, there are just very few trips. During my visit in August 2022, there were just 13 cruises per day in each direction, at a total one way travel time of 25 minutes. Waltershof and Neuhof come with public transport connections. These are rather rare, though, as well. Line 61 operates on weekdays only (at the time of writing), i.e. you need to cruise between Monday and Friday to enjoy the same views I did. By the way, not all ferries stop at Köhlbrandhof, so make sure that you have a good connection if you want to have a look around that stop.

 

HADAG Ferries – Route 61 – My Trip (Pictured Story)

The Landungsbrücken, the famous Altona Fish Market (Fischmarkt) and the Dockland Fishing Harbor with the iconic buildings – you know these places from the very first posting of my series. However, from the Dockland pier, the vessel more or less heads straight South into the Köhlbrand channel. By the way, you are just a few meters from the modern Elbtunnel (Elbe Tunnel) away. Thousands of cars go below river level where ferry Line 61 is heading South.

While it is hard to spot the Autobahn 7, which is heading below the Elbe River, the first sight you cannot miss is the Pegel, which shows the current water level to the ships in Hamburg Harbor. This part of the harbor majorly features the handling of containers. You also see the key sight of this trip from far away already: the Köhlbrandbrücke (“Köhlbrand Bridge”) is an engineering masterpiece and one of the most iconic constructions of the city. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit of foggy during my visit – but I hope you nonetheless enjoy them. The Miniatur Wunderland is a great way to explore the bridge (as a scale model), by the way.

There are two piers where you can leave the ferry to have better views of bridge: Watershof on the West side of the Köhlbrand canal and Neuhof on the East side of it. Neuhof is also the final stop of the ferry, where it will go back the same route (which also means it stops twice at Waltershof on a round trip). Neuhof is better connected to buses if you want to use other public transport on your way back. On the way back, I had some nice snaps of passing ships and a closer look from the ferry to the Pegel.

 

HADAG Ferries Trip Report – The Episodes

The episodes of my small Hamburg public ferries trip report are given in the order of the ferry line numbering, not in chronologically the way I published them:

 

Trip Report Inceptions

Here are the starting postings of each Trip Report I posted in here so far

 

Flyctory.com about Ice Hockey

Here are all ice hockey postings on Flyctory.com:

You might also like

Helgoland Dune Ferry (“Dünenfähre” – Pictured Story)

German Rail (Deutsche Bahn) Premium Lounge Berlin Main Station

Stuttgart Funicular (“Standseilbahn”)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *