Our last full day in Germany. Started with our first really good breakfast since Salzburg. We then got on the Rhine boat and for the first time on our trip it was really quite cold, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the Rhine from the top of the boat! It was worth it because it was so beautiful. There are vineyards all over, beautiful hills, picturesque little German towns and the Siren Loreley (spelled Lorelei in English version and the name of our little girl, though we didn’t know it at the time) watching over the tricky part of the river. Castles littering the hillsides giving us a reminder of what used to be here. We also got our first rain of the trip, but that soon went away and the sun came right back out. The ride flew by and the next thing we knew we were at the dock disembarking.
Luckily we made an early train back down to Mainz so we had over an hour for some food. The only real food stop at the train station was….a McDonald’s. We were trying not to eat at any American fast food chains, but this was really our only choice. It wasn’t bad; it was nice to have a little taste of home.
Then we were off to Cologne for the rest of the day and night. As soon as you walk out of the cologne train station you see Cologne’s famous Giant Cathedral. This thing is huge and it looks really old, but its actually not. Cologne decimated by bombing during World War II, just like most of Germany, and that destroyed most of the older parts of the city.
After checking in to our hotel we went on a nice walk around the city. First things first though, had to find a way to charge our camera (left the cord in Munich…oops). Luckily that was easy enough, found a camera store that had a universal battery charger and we were in business. Then after succeeding at finding the camera charger we toured around the city. Cologne has quite a lot of fun interesting points to check out. Included in this are the lock bridge, a roman museum built around an old roman floor and my wife’s favorite, a chocolate museum. We hit all the sights.
Side note in all of this, Rick Steve’s self guided tours from his books have been a great way for us to explore a place we are only in for a short amount of time.
When we finished walking around we found a Thai Restaurant to eat at. It was surprisingly really good, you wouldn’t think a Thai place in Germany would be, but it was great. Good food, good local Kölsch beer, happy Dot and Ryan. We headed back to our room after this because there was a fitness conference or expo and people from it were everywhere. Off to sleep for us in last night in Germany.
Travel Tales From BB-8 