Cologne

On November 24, 2019, a Sunday, we visited Cologne.  The big draw there is the Cathedral, I will cover that in the next post.

Here is a view of the bridge and Cathedral from where we are docked on the east side of the Rhine:

Another river ship a little further down the Rhine, on the west bank:

We hopped on buses after breakfast, and they drove us across the bridge to the Cathedral.  We started the walking tour at the cathedral, but Sunday mass was about to start so we only went inside for a quick look, photos are in the next post.

From the cathedral we proceeded past the Roman-Germanic museum (closed, as everthing was, it was Sunday) to look through the window at the floor of a Roman villa that was unearthed during the construction of an air-raid shelter in 1941.  You can see my legs in the reflection:

Then we walked past a piece of Roman road that was unearthed at some point and preserved:

This pub is famous for something, but not being a drinker, I instantly forgot why:

I think this is the tower of the city hall, with Christmas Market stalls in the foreground (not yet open):

This was a fountain, to commemorate something to do with the end of WWII I think:

The walking tour ended there, but we went moseying off to try to see either the Mustard Museum or the Chocolate Museum.  We didn't have much choice, it was either one of those or the perfume musuem (Eau de Cologne), as almost everything is closed here on Sundays.  However, the Mustard museum was by tour only and not in english, and the Chocolate museum was insanely overpriced and looked very busy, so we just started walking back to the ship for lunch.  These are some buildings we passed along the river:

Pathway beside the river, heading north to the rail/pedestrian bridge:

The bridge we are going to cross back to our ship, which you can see off in the distance under the bridge:

This bridge was one of the first "lock" bridges, where young lovers pledge their undying love by locking a padlock to the railings and throwing the key into the river.  You can see the locks at the left:

The bridge is so full of them, that new loves have had to start colonizing the railings beside the bridge:

On the other side of the railing covered with locks is where the trains pass, both local and regional:

Ed with the locks:

Close up of some of them, they went back to 2007 or so:

The bridge from the east bank.  I lost my favourite neck-warmer scarf somewhere around here.

Arriving back at the ship, it had just moved away from the dock to let another river boat leave.  Due to lack of mooring space we had been double-docked with it overnight.

Here it is re-docked, that is my brother and sister-in-law waiting to board, they had returned to the ship just a little too late to board over the double-docked ship:

Just a view of the little balcony of our stateroom, with the Cathedral in the distance:

After lunch we headed back over the bridge, as we wanted to tour the Cathedral and climb the tower now that Mass was over.  This is the train station beside the Cathedral:

The plaza in front of the train station, beside the cathedral:

View of the cathedral and bridge from our stateroom that night:

The rest of my photos are of the Cathedral, they are coming up next.