Day 19: Köln

We had a delightful German-style Sunday. We slept in, had a family breakfast and did some school work and laundry. The apartment that we are staying in advertised that it had a washer and dryer. We only saw one appliance yesterday and assumed it was a washer only - upon closer inspection, we discovered that it was a washer and dryer all in one......How cool is that?!?  Well, .... it would be very cool if it actually dried the clothes - it seems that is dries them a bit and warms them - but does not actually dry them. Not the most convenient thing when you are counting on getting all of your clothes cleaned before you head off on a series of hotel stays with no washer. So instead, we have decorated the apartment temporarily with our clothing hanging wherever possible - really quite lovely.
Our German-style Sunday continued with a stroll across the Deutzer Bridge into the old town area of Cologne. We visited the chocolate museum - pretty fascinating to see the process from the planting of the tree to the wrapping of the chocolate bar as it comes off of the conveyor belt.

Before leaving the chocolate museum, we enjoyed a piece of Schoko-Duo-Torte at the Café - delicious. Outside the museum, we had some Wurst and Pommes for lunch - it was from one of the stands at the Christmas Market, which does not officially open until tomorrow. All of the Christmas Markets open tomorrow and we can't wait! The amount of preparation that we have seen going into them is incredible!

 We continued to the pedestrian area of the old town and strolled down Hohestraße, the main shopping street. This street has existed as a shopping area in Köln at least since 50AD. Being a Sunday, all of the stores were closed - I found that this actually made it much more pleasant to walk through!

We passed the Cathedral again - we arrived as the bells were playing. Nicky estimated that there must have been hundreds of bells ringing at once to create so much sound.

We walked through a few more Christmas Markets, awaiting opening day tomorrow, on our way back to our apartment. We relaxed for a bit before dinner - Dave and Barb reading up on our next few cities and Johnny and Nicky playing cards. A family dinner and some school work closed out the evening - perfect day!