We met Kristen at her apartment at 8:30 (it was all of a 5 minute walk from our place). We dialed in the route to Cologne and headed on our way. It was a 2.5 hour drive.
We didn't go straight to the city center as we figured parking would be impossible, instead we parked several tram stops outside of the center and rode the tram in. We had a little bit of trouble interpreting the correct fare, and in the end paid less then we should have, but we made it after one transfer.
We walked out of the tram stop and looked up...yep that was a pretty amazing cathedral. For pics you can check out Kristen's blog (we pulled the typical "tastet" and hadn't charged our camera).
Kristen and I were starving so we decided to walk around to find a restaurant and have lunch. After a filling lunch (I thought I was getting a bratworst but actually ordered half of a chicken!), we were ready to attack the market. The first stop? Glugwein of course. None for me, but plenty for Kevin and Kristen. We then walked through the cute little stalls until it was time to meet the Meetin group (Meetin is a website that you can use to connect with others that are looking to do fun group stuff...think of it as insta-friend) for the private tour that Kevin had arranged. We followed a tiny little tour guide around the church, losing her every now and then. We weren't able to walk around most of it (Kevin knows all of the technical terms) because confessions were being heard.
Kevin and Kristen climbed the bell tower while I went looking for a cafe, as my back was killing me. They came back with some great pictures and a couple of shaking legs. We finished seeing the parts of the market we hadn't seen, purchased a couple of cute wooden toys for our son and then went looking for more food. By this time there were even more people in the market and there was a huge crush of people you had to make it through to leave. It didn't help that I was trying to eat a pretzel and fondue as we were walking out.
We headed to the tram stop and had to figure out how to buy tickets, again. We didn't have any change so we went to the window and stumbled through enough German to get the right tickets. Now to figure out which stop we needed...we missed our stop by about 3 stops and ended up walking back to the car. Thank goodness for the GPS....
All in all a good day.
Sunday we picked up the apartment a little, Kevin went for his long run (he is training for his first half marathon) and I went shopping for a food processor. I found a Cuisinart for 50% off, they told me at the store that most people here don't know the brand so it doesn't sell well. That is their loss and my gain!
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