Germany beckons part 2: Köln and Düsseldorf

This is a bit of a late update of our trip to Germany No2 - but better late than never, right?

No sooner had we come home again, before we saw even cheaper tickets to Düsseldorf, and again from one day to the next our trip was decided and off we went the following day. Düsseldorf is very, very close to Köln, and seeing as there isn't that much to do in Düsseldorf, we went straight from the airport to Köln.

And Köln is a lovely city. Lovely Mr.T indulged us in clothing shopping, games shopping was courtesy of Holiday money from the in-laws (5 new games!! - including a new version of Carcassonne, one of our favourite games and Dominion, a new game we have heard good things about.)

While we were in Germany Channuka started, and that is a great holiday, one of my favourites - filled with candles, candies, fried foods and family time. We lit our candles in our hotel room every night and had a wonderful time enjoying the time, the company, the winter and the holiday.

We went to the many, many Christmas markets (they have seven in Köln, I think) and enjoyed the people watching, lots of handicrafts and lots of local food specialties. Most we didn't eat, but we did have lovely kartoffel puffer or rivekartoffeln otherwise known as latkes in our home. (Kjært barn har mange navn...) They were lovely, crispy, made fresh. The best part was that we could oversee the entire production ourselves, from the grating of the potatoes until they were taken up from the vat of oil, served to us steaming hot with apple sauce. At one place we had them with mustard, which was new to me, but oh, so, so good!

In Köln you also find the Lindt Chocolate Museum, so as a the chocoholic I am, with the most incredible and indulging husband, we went there and looked at the history, production and moulding of chocolates. It was quite fun, but unfortunately there were very few samples to be had...

The neatest building in Köln has to be their cathedral. It is so awesome, and had been built and built and built for centuries! So beautiful, and right next to the train station, so it was the very first thing we saw when we arrived in the city. We went back to it three times, I think. One of the times we walked up inside one of the towers about 100 meters straight up! It was quite an experience!

Dusseldurf - well not much to say really. They have a lot of bars and pubs and we went to a few of the old ones. Probably the coolest pub experience in Germany so far was when the bartender came over to our table and showed us how to eat pickled eggs. That totally redeemed some other not so great bartenders from Dusseldurf for me!

The long and the short of it is this: I really like travelling in Germany. I like shopping in Germany. I love travelling with Mr. T. I love being with Mr. T. And we had a wonderful time together.