Today the ship first docked in Zons, Germany, to let many of us off for the morning’s walking tour. We boarded buses which took us into the city of Cologne to start the tours. We had time to go inside the Cologne Cathedral, learn about how much people from Cologne don’t like people from Düsseldorf(!), see Old Town, and learn about the cologne (perfume) industry, as well as about the church taxes Germans pay. After the official tour, we stayed in Cologne a few hours and walked over the river to the Cologne Triangle building, which has an observation deck up top from where the first photo below was taken.
The Cologne Cathedral took over 600 years to complete and was the tallest building in the world in 1880. It supposedly houses relics from the Magi in the Shrine of the Three Kings which is located behind the altar. While 90% of Cologne was bombed and leveled in WWII, the cathedral was left standing, mainly as a landmark for Allied pilots. It’s huge, and would be quite a landmark! Later on when we went to the Cologne Triangle building we walked across the Hohenzollembrucke bridge, where millions of couples have attached locks and thrown their keys into the river. There were locks everywhere high and low! Afterwards we wandered around a bit more before heading to the shuttle, which took us to our ship, now docked in an industrial area in Cologne due to water level issues (not enough) on the Rhine.
There was a bit of time to relax before we attended the Port Talk about tomorrow’s schedule. Then we and our friends left directly for our Cologne Beer Culture & Dinner excursion. We took a bus back into the city where our tour guide took us to three different bierhauser. At the first we had a three course German meal and lots of Kolsch beer, which is the official beer of Cologne, and at the second two bars we had more Kolsch beer. Then the bus took us back to our boat which had left Cologne as soon as we departed and was now making a brief stop in Wesseling to pick us up!
Tomorrow is “Castle Day”. We will be cruising down the Rhine where many castles are located. The chance of rain right now is very high, and we are hoping that forecast will change so we can be on the top deck to admire the views.