Laura and I took a trip to Köln (Cologne), Germany on Saturday since the weather was nice and we had some free time. Köln is about 30 minutes south of Düsseldorf along the Rhine River. We purchased a Schönes Wochenende (Nice Weekend) train ticket, which would allow us to travel to any other town within the North Rhein-Westphalia region and to also use their city transit system once there.
It turns out, the ticket we purchased wasn’t elligible to use on the type of train we boarded (an ICE hi-speed bullet train) and we had no seats for the short ride. We’re lucky it was the next station along the line, or they might have booted us off. Lesson learned. Once we arrived…
… we spent a few minutes talking with the Deutsche Bahn folks to
make sure we knew which trains our ticket was valid for, picked up some
tourist information, and walked out of the station to be immediately
greeted by the Cologne Cathedral
(Kölner Dom) looming overhead. The Cathedral was for a time after it
was built the largest structure in the world, until the Washington
Monument, and the Eiffel Tower beat it out. So of course, we had to
climb to the top… all 509 stairs in the spiraling staircase.
Pictures from this and the rest of the trip are online in the gallery.
After that, we grabbed some lunch at a McDonald
‘s across the street – hey, sometimes it’s best to go wth what you know
- and started walking around the main shopping district and down into
the old town. We then continued on to the Rhine and walked down to the
Schokoladenmuseum (Chocolate Museum) and grabbed a quick snack in the cafe, skipped on the tour, but checked out the gift shop.
From there we decided to head a little further out to the city of Bonn
, which for many years served as the capital of West Germany. It’s a
quite a bit smaller than both Düsseldorf and Köln, but still had plenty
of interest. Lots of shopping, nice restaurants, and was very
pedestrian friendly. After shopping for an hour or two and a decent
steak dinner, we headed home for the night. The train ride (on the
correct type of train this time) left Bonn at around 9pm and had us
back to Düsseldorf in an hour. Plenty of time to get home in time to
watch UofL play UNC…. which is about all I’m going to say about that.
I’m
still waiting for my work permit to clear the city office so that I can
begin working… I’m getting bored to tears, but trying to stay
productive. I managed to ride my bike clear across town without
getting too terribly lost and purchased a set of fender for Laura’s bike . Ones for my bike won’t be in until next Tuesday, so I guess I’ve got that
to look forward to. The weather is slowly getting nicer here, with
more sun and less rain, so hopefully we’ll get to head out together on
our bikes this weekend and do some more exploring. Unless, I end up
starting work this week, in which case I’ll apparently be heading to
London on Friday.
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