Koln & Bonn

This trip was nowhere near our longest adventure, so why it is taking me sooo long to finish posting about it, I'm not sure, but here we are in Koln, and Bonn, where I took my first overseas adventure way back in high school.  I somehow expected to remember more things, but the memory has been wiped a bit.  I did have an accurate picture of this amazing cathedral in Koln (Cologne in English), and a vague memory of climbing stairs of the belfry.  We lived in the city of Bonn, but I remember visiting Koln at least a couple of times.  On this trip, we ventured there once - it was about an hour+ from our hotel, and we stood out in the icy wind to get a few pictures, checked out the inside of the cathedral, wandered through an electronics store (bought a waffle iron - yippee - they are crazy expensive in Dubai), and had bratwurst and fries for lunch in the warmth of the car.

We went to Bonn twice - and since this was the town I lived in, I thought my memory would be stronger here.  Nope.  I remembered the Beethoven statue, and how in the picture I asked someone to take for me, they cut off his head (before digital pictures, so I didn't know until I returned home and developed the pics - too late for re-takes).  So we tried to start there, but were driving kind of aimlessly until we happened onto it!  We walked around the square - and were thrilled to see TJ Maxx!!  It was New Year's Eve the first time we visited, so most stores were closed, or closing within minutes, but it was a pretty exciting moment - and a good incentive to return… We shopped there a bit on our return trip, but without a lot of success, but it was nice to be someplace semi-familiar.

As was this awesome jungle display in the Kaufhof window - both kids loved it, and on our second visit, Finley made several friends who just wanted to pat her cheeks:)  Another thing the kids loved was the plethora of pigeons - Will LOVES chasing birds, and Finley has chased in his footsteps.  The passersby (and the pigeons) were not so thrilled with his efforts however.

The man...

My little family with the man...

Strange sculpture - outside a church.  And the charming streets of Bonn.  Since my host family lived across the river, in reminiscing with a friend on the same trip, we decided that we hadn't really spent as much time as I thought in town - we did share a memory of the post office behind the Beethoven statue - yep - no email then, so we sent a lot of postcards home during that month.  And ate a lot of Haagen Daas - when I fell in love with waffle cones.  Despite the cold, we wanted to eat some ice cream, but we couldn't track down the  promised Haagen Daas store on either of our trips into the city.  Oh well.

I think one more post will finally cover all the adventures of this trip - stay tuned.