Our last day in Cologne

Today we tackled the Dom Tower. All 509 steps. I counted the steps going up as a kind of encouragement to myself about how many less I had to go. Only....I only got to count up to about 300 and we had reached the end. So here I was dreadiing walking up 500 steps and all for nothing. Apparently the 509 steps include the steps going down. I dunno. It sounds like cheating to me.

The journey is made more bearable by a couple of sightseeing stops on the way up. The bell tower which you get to walk right around, and........okay really it was just me pretending to look out the little windows to admire the view but really just for a breather.

The intricacy and attention to detail is mind boggling. It was sad to see some tagging on the walls. Greg said he saw some that were older than him, as far back as 1962. Older even than me.

We went on to the Römish-Germanisches Museum and kind of raced around it;I think we were still there for over an hour. Then we did the Ludwig museum as I felt that it would be a good contrast between the more traditional art and this modern art. We whipped through here even faster. Some of it was rather distateful. Some was just boring and some was just who cares. I liked some of it but the bit Jordy and Greg liked best was sitting down. Huh!

Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Once we had done the chocolate museum, Greg wanted to what else we wanted to do. He was met with blank faces because basically, we felt the chocolate museum was the "be all and end all" of our tourist sights. However the Wallraf-Richartz Museum(WRM) had been recommended to us by a few friends and I have to say it is a definite must see.

We got lucky by buying a special concession ticket which meant that for the price of one entry fee we basically got to see a whole list of other museums for free. It's called the "MuseumsCard" in German and in English which is handy and it entitles 2 adults and 2 children under 18 to visit each municipal museum in Cologne once on any two consecutive opening days. Also on the first day of validity, the card can be used on all busses and trams within the city zone from 9am onwards.
So here's the list of museums-Wallraf-Richartz museum, Fondation Corboud, Museum Ludwig, Agfa Foto-Historama, Museum Schnuetgen, Roemish-germanisches Museum, Museum fuer Ostasiatishe Museum, Koelnisches Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Kasmir Hagen, Museum fuer Angewandte Kunst and Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum.

All three of us really enjoyed the art on display here. My pleasure in it was probably intensified as the last exhibit we had seen was Picasso's modern stuff ´whích if I was being polite I would have to say 'it wasn't to my taste';and if I wasn't being polite I would have to say, 'it was the self-indulgent rubbish of a dirty old man.'

So anyway, the WRM had Munch, Renoir, Monet etc...Jordy was impressed that I recognized their work. I was too. However I have to credit my knowledge to jigsaw puzzles. We even enjoyed the religious paintings. They were something else.

It was soon time again for us to head off to our pub. But we only got to have a table for 20 mins, it is such a popular place. Plenty enough time for 3 beers.

The Chocolate Museum

Our original plan was to make the most of the short time we had in Cologne and we were going to get up really early. Of course we didn't because we were in holiday mode. So we only really managed to get ourselves going with the incentive of our getting free breakfast which finished at 10 am.

What to see first? Why the chocolate museum of course. We were there a long time, enjoying learning about the whole process starting from history and the cocoa bean, otherwise known as "Brown Gold" or the fruit of the gods;also looking at all the gadgets, and watching the chocolate getting made, and wrapped etc....Usually Greg has to exhort Jordy and I to read the blurbs, and thehistoric stuff so it was funny that this time he was asking us to please NOT read everything.

It was a neat place despite the fact that we only got to eat a little bit of free chocolate but that little bit sure did taste good. Plus we only bought one bar of chocolate each from the museum shop due to the exhorbitant prices. Plus we had been adviced that you can buy the chocolates elsewhere cheaper.

What we did spend money on was the museum cafe. It had surprisingly reasonable prices for cake and coffee. Jordy and I opted for cake. Unfortunately we have no pics of them because the waiter barely had time to set the cakes on the table before Jordy and I devoured them. He was lucky not to lose his hands. heh heh.