Cologne? Didn't smell like it...

Continuing the Rhine theme, we explored Cologne today, one of the cities I was the most excited to visit before we came up with this Rhine route. We had some good Roman, medieval, and modern historical vibes throughout the day (with some more boardgames bought from the classically great German board game shops)

Starting the day strong with a view of the Bayentrum which translates as cool tower in German, probably... And my tulips in a very elegant van-safe vase

Little cycle into the city in 18 degree weather which I'm still in shock about (cool view of the Cathedral in the distance tho)

In a mad dash to find a toilet, apparently a rarity in German cities, we ended up in this enormous 3 storey underground U-Bahn station. We didn't see anyone else down there giving it a very cool bond-villainesque ambiance 

Awesome example of a Roman Road in Cologne. I had no idea they were such large cobbles, considerably less nice to walk on than modern tarmac, what were these Romans thinking ay?

In the Cologne stadt museum they had this 20th century (think...?) board game of a journey down the Rhine which nicely shows our journey without all that pesky north being up business! 

Still in the Stadt museum we saw this amazing painting of Cologne post WW2 (I think it was 1945 but could have been 46, I'm so good at citing my facts). It shows the main bridge over the Rhine which had been destroyed in the heavy bombing and the temporary bridge the allies had constructed in its place. The aspect that really caught me though was the crowds of Colognians making their way back to their city from PoW camps or just war time displacement. Not an angle I had particularly considered before. Good museum, would recommend

The day was proving too nice so we decided to dampen our spirits with a trip to the Gestapo HQ which, despite cheaping out on the audio guides and having to use google translate, was very well put together. The whole place had a really distinctive air of absent bureaucracy, it gave me more Stasi east German vibes than Gestapo in all honesty

Finished the day with a bit of shopping out and a return to the Dom which took over 630 years to finish, that made me feel a lot less bad about the 133 days it took us to finish Moira!

Finally had a nice little cycle down the far side of the Rhine so we got a great view of the city on the way back. Then we drove down to Bonn for an early start tomorrow with the plan to cover 2 more cities and get our selves nice and rural for a night for the first time (for two countryside people this has been a lot of concrete!)