Day 2: hanging out in Cologne

Well we slept, but we woke at 5am!  Not surprised and hopefully we are off to a good sleep schedule.  We were both starving when we woke up but breakfast did not start until 7!  We went to the Regency Club Lounge for breakfast (can you say free?) and this view just never gets old!

The breakfast was so yummy!  I love German breakfast!

Don't be alarmed as I ate at least two plates of food just like this!  I can't even remember what Colin ate but it was a lot and he drank the entire pitcher of milk and juice.  Oh and those pretzel sticks are aaaamazing; yep we ate all of them too!  And with the view of the river, cathedral, and bridge right in front of us, I just sat and looked.  Of course it was only 745 so where else could we go?  Back to our room . . . and that is when we committed a super big no-no on how to beat jet-lag . . . we laid back down after breakfast and fell asleep!  NO!!!  We finally both got up and out the door so hopefully did not screw up our sleep schedule.  Honestly, everything I wanted to do in Cologne we did yesterday so today was a bonus of wandering and discovering places.  We walked along the Rhine River towards the Schokoladen Museum sponsored by Lindt.  

The smell when you walked inside was amazing!  Of course the first thing Colin noticed was the café.  We thought the museum was interesting and worth the visit.  The best part of the tour was a lady would dip a cookie wafer in the warm chocolate to sample; it was so yummy!  

The second best part had an actual machine making the mini chocolate bars that you could take home with you too.  The up close engineering was pretty cool of the process making chocolate bars.

And then we ended up in the café for a snack.  Colin went all in with a chocolate cake and he said the best hot chocolate ever.  We were both surprised at how it was served.  I went for my all time favorite raspberry cake!  I grew a love for all things raspberry when I lived in Germany.  

Across the street was a Senf Museum (Mustard) but well it was a bust so back to walking and exploring.  We found the Great Saint Martin Church which was lovely in its own way.  Complete opposite from the Cologne Cathedral but nice too.  

    

We were both hungry so Colin decided he wanted to eat at a place call Meister Bock.  It was a sausage stand inside the train station.  I am not one to say, "oh, let's go eat at the train station" but he wanted to give it a try.  

I'm not going to lie.  It was delicious and cheap!  Probably our cheapest meal ever of less than 7€ for both of us!  The only thing that would have made it better were some pommes (fries).  So we went to find some pommes and Kölsch.  We thought we needed to have a taste test of different brewers so off we went.  We tried Gaffel Kölsch . . . 

. . . and Früh Kölsch . . . 

. . . and that was enough Kölsch for me!  It was back to the hotel to pack and prepare to move to a new town tomorrow.  It was a nice, relaxing day with a lot of time just hanging out and soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the moment!

steps:  13,300 

miles:   5.6