Back to Köln

Well, at least I've managed to figure out how to get html into my headers. Now I might go back and sort out that last Köln entry.

The weather looked to be acceptable on Saturday, so we figured we'd take a chance and head down to Köln for the day.

You've no doubt seen plenty of pics that I posted the last time we went, just before Christmas, so I'll try and limit it to a couple views that we had not been able to get up to this point, since the first place we headed for was the Cathedral.
Seems that if you have the stamina for it, there are something like 509 steps to the top of the building.

Gabe and I thought we'd make the sacrifice and sit that one out.

Even the "kids" were having some shakey legs when they came down, and all three of them are young reasonably fit individuals.

This is one of the views.
Of course, you just want to hope they don't ring the honkin' big bell, that you're welcome to see in action on Youtube
or just take a look here if you have dial-up..
This puppy is the 24 ton St. Peter's Glocke and if you take a peek at this site, you can see why the building took something like 632 years to complete.
Mind you, it looks like the job is never ending, judging by the scaffolding.

The happy travellers...

There were gobs more pictures of course, but we'll move on.... to the Chocolate Museum! Of course, there was absolutely no place to park a car, so by the time we actually got there, it was pretty much after dark.

This would be where they make some of the good stuff...


After dropping a few Euros at the Chocolate store on the way out, it was time to head home.
By that time in the evening the traffic had let up and the visibility was pretty good, so we pushed it a little. The kids had their first introduction to going just a tad quicker on the Autobahn. Even though I was mostly doing 180, I was still getting passed from time to time. (???)

It's ok, really.

Coming back into The Netherlands on the A35 and initially being restricted to 100 k.p.h. felt like we were nearly parked.