Day 8: Cologne, Germany

June 11, 2013

We got to bed late so we slept in a little this morning and hung around the B&B for most of the morning, but we still had a fun-filled day! 

We started by heading across town to see St. Gereon's Basilica. This church was built in the 4th century by the Romans and is named after a martyred Roman soldier who refused to make sacrifices to Pagan gods and said that his God was higher than the emperor. This caused him and his men to be beheaded, but also caused him to be named a Saint. His "head" is a statue outside the church in the park. The church itself was beautiful and much different than most of the churches we had seen before. Like the entire city, it suffered major damage during WWII and wasn't reopened until the 1980s. The security guard was very nice and told us all this information. 

The outside of St. Gereon's Basilica

The inside of the Basilica was gorgeous!

The organ inside the basilica

The giant head of St. Gereon

Afterward we went to the Kolnisches Stadtmuseum (Cologne City Museum) which had many pieces from throughout Cologne's history such as instruments, cars, watches, armor, pictures of the city, chests, silver, fine dishes and weapons. The museum itself wasn't as good as the other one we went to, but it showed that Cologne had a very long and eventful history. 

A 1940 Ford Taurus in the museum

This machine was powered by 6 men and was used to lift the blocks to
build the towers of the cathedral after the Industrial Revolution.

Executioner swords used for beheading 

On our way to the next church across town, Clayton found a store that sold many coins. He enjoyed looking for a while, but didn't find anything worth their asking prices. The next church we saw was Gross St. Martin (don't worry, Gross is German for large). The inside was not nearly as cool as the Basilica, but it had some Roman excavations under the church and the outside was very pretty.

Gross St. Martin

Clayton with the Roman Excavations below the church

The ivy covered tower of St. Martin

After seeing Gross St. Martin, we went to the boat dock to get a ticket for the evening cruise tonight, but found that it only runs on certain days so we bought a ticket for tomorrow night. We were looking for a museum with many sculptures, so we stopped at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Sculptures are our favorite pieces of art. However, they only had mostly paintings on display at the moment so we decided to wait.

Walking through the city you see the spires of the cathedral from almost everywhere

We found a grocery and Clayton was able to get 1.5 L of Sprite for only 1.19 Euros ($1.58) so he was quite happy. We dropped it off at the B&B and then went back down to the riverside and had supper at a restaurant on the riverfront. We both had spaghetti carbonara (spaghetti, white sauce, egg and bacon/ham). After dinner we sat by the river for a while, then got ice cream and walked back to the B&B to do laundry.

The restaurant where we had supper by the river

 

Sitting looking out on the Hohenzollern Bridge and the Rhine River

The park area by the river with the Cathedral spires in the bakground

We are so used to being only on weekend trips that it feels like we aren't doing much sightseeing during the day (even though the soreness in our bodies says otherwise). However, it is nice to really have several days to take in the city and really explore it all.