Tuesday, May 3 Cologne, Germany

Hello Faithful Followers,

Today we visited Cologne, Germany.  Cologne is the home of Eau De Cologne although we didn't buy any.

The boat docked just after 9:30 AM.  We joined a number of other fellow cruisers for a walking tour of the old part of the city.  Cologne was badly damaged by allied bombing during World War II but the old part of town has been reconstructed to look like it did before the war.

The big highlight is their gothic cathedral.  It has twin spires that are 515 feet high.  At one time, until the construction of the Eiffel Tower, this was the tallest man-made object in the world.

After our tour we returned to the boat for lunch.  I had bratwurst and Mary had a salad and a little "muffeletta" sandwich.

Then we struck out on our own and headed for the chocolate museum.  It is operated by Lindt.  Lindt is from Switzerland but some part of the process in taking a cocoa bean and making it into chocolate was invented in Cologne. The museum had 3 floors and had fairly extensive displays and exhibits that talked about the history of chocolate from the time the Europeans learned about it from the Aztecs in Mexico. 

They also explained how they process the cocoa bean from the time it is grown until it becomes the chocolate we eat.  The most intersting part for us was they had an area with machines actually taking the liquid chocolate and forming it into little candy bars. Of course, there are free samples!

After spending a fair amount of time in the chocolate museum we walked around the town on our own.  We returned to the boat for the late afternoon talks and then dinner.  Tonight's entree was lamb.

Tomorrow we reach the middle Rhine where there are a lot of castles.

Sorry for no pictures but we aren't able to download them.