Sunday July 23rd,
The first day in Europe is always a bit disorienting as your body processes the 6 hr time change. So we had a leisurely morning and hit the road just before noon. The excitement level was palpable when I told everyone the first stop was going to be the Netherlands American Cemetery. It is the resting place of 8,301 American solders as well as a wall listing 1700 more that were missing. Seeing all those plots is a solemn visual reminder of the cost of war. The contrast is the now virtually invisible border crossing into Germany just a few km down the road.
We then continued our journey into Germany with the destination of Cologne. The centerpiece of Cologne is the massive cathedral in the center of the city. It is so massive it is very hard to get the entire thing is a picture unless you are standing a few hundred yards back. This beast was started back in 1248 but was not completed to the original design until 1880. And Karen thinks my renovation projects were slow !
The best feature is you can climb 533 narrow winding steps to the top. No elevator, No waiver form. The biggest regret is that everybody writes their names along the walls all the way up the narrow stairs. Nobody told me to bring a Sharpie !
Next visit was the chocolate museum down along the Rhine. It was an interesting tour and we learned more than we need to know about your friend the cocoa bean. It as also interesting to see the manufacturing process but the queue to sample pieces coming off the line had a very poor return on time investment.
Jake and I headed next door to the German Olympic and Sports museum. It was a bit of an odd collection of old equipment and items in German we could not understand. I was disappointing that they did not have an exhibition of East German weightlifting where you could inject yourself with anabolic steroids. Not the worst thing I have spent 6 Euro on but glad the rest decided to pass on this visit.
We ended the evening of a nice outdoor meal in one of the more popular squares in Cologne. I think everyone was pretty tired out at the end of the day as we headed back to Maastricht.
No comments:
Post a Comment