We did hit a detour and lost about 1/2 hour, but were able to drive directly to the underground garage under the church. We discovered this convenient place to park a couple of years ago when we visited here with Linda's brother, Dan.
After checking the timing of English language tours, we had just enough time to grab lunch at an outside cafe on a sunny, warmish day.
The cafe also had a complete menu of sweets but, we passed when this guy didn't.
Back to the church we met with our tour guide from Bulgaria.
Our guide took us around the church pointing out stained glass windows, statues and the box that supposedly contain the artifacts of the Magi.
The story goes that an archbishop who supported Frederick Barbossa, invaded Milan, Italy, and brought them to Cologne.
This is a statue of St. Christopher (saint for travelers) carrying the baby Jesus who is getting heavier and heavier. Then Jesus said to him "Now you know how I feel carrying the weight of the world". The cathedral was started in 1248 but wasn't finished until the late 19th century. During much of that time, congregants entered the church from the side door and this would be the first thing they saw.
Once the tour was over and we watched a short video, we walked down to the river for an hour boat tour on the Rhine River.
Cologne used to be a major port and now some of the buildings seemed to be influenced by that history. We thought these condos looked like cranes.
A sausage in curry and another kind of sausage and a beer. We're Germans now.
Once off the boat, we walk back up to a large square rimmed by restaurants and filled with tents. It looked like a huge wine tasting party. It was late Saturday afternoon and the partying was beginning. After walking all the way around we finally found an open table inside a cafe.
I had the best weiner schnitzel I've had in a long time and Linda went for the wurst and sauerkraut dish,
The girls needed to check things on their mobiles.
With our tummys full, we headed out of town. Because there was heavy traffic on the other side of the road in the morning, we decided to go a different way and stop in Dusseldorf for dessert. We knew nothing about Dusseldorf but we like the way the word sounded.
Once we arrived in the Zentrum part of the city, we came upon closed streets that led down to the river. Eventually, we crossed the river and could see a mass of people gathering right where we wanted to stop for some apple strudel. Obviously, that was not going to happen. We learned later that there was a Japanese celebration with big fireworks done the Japanese way (what ever that means) and music going on. We headed out of town and found a little truck stop with coffee but no apple strudel. So, we settled for chocolate and finally arrived "home" about 10:30.
No comments:
Post a Comment