A Brief and Wet Visit in Cologne

 We thought we had beaten the Weather Gods and AccuWeather, when we had breakfast in the morning. The sun was shining, and it looked like a lovely warm-ish day.

For some reason we had been given a docking spot a good walking distance from the Cathedral, so we would be using buses to get us to our tour downtown. So off we all went, and not five minutes after we had organized our groups and set off toward the Cathedral, it started to rain. By the time we got into some shelter where our guide could start giving us some history, it was pouring. And it continued to pour for almost the entire tour.

Needless to say, we weren't able to take too many photos! When the rain let up a bit, we walked through parts of the old town.

The Fish Market, and some of the
older buildings

One of the old town gates

Outside of one of the breweries. There is
a particular beer here called Kölsch. If
the same beer is brewed on the other side of the
river it can't be called that any more. It has to 
be made within the city walls.

A fountain depicting characters from 
the poems of a famous Cologne poet

In one corner, our guide pointed out the bronze statues of a couple of well-known comedy figures, Tünnes und Schäl, whose act is done entirely in the local Cologne accent. That means that a lot of the jokes don't translate very well. Apparently, if you rub Tünnes's (on the left) nose and toe at the same time, you'll come back to Cologne; that's why they're both so shiny. Our guide says there's no truth to that, it was just a tour guide trying to get people to do something silly and it caught on.

There's a little bar/restaurant right beside the
statues

Oh, look, the rain stopped long enough
to get at least one photo!

There was an option to go for a Kölsch Beer with Razvan after the tour, but since we were wet and didn't know if the rain would ever stop, we decided to go back to the ship instead.

Of course, you know what happened. As soon as we stepped back off the bus, the sun came out, and it turned into a very nice afternoon. We were even able to sit on the sun deck, which had been opened in time for Castle Ping Pong on Thursday.

We left Cologne in the late afternoon, bound for Amsterdam, and a little while later we sailed past Düsseldorf.

There always seemed to be something going on at mealtime - we're going to have to walk and swim for an hour each day for two weeks to work it all off!

Dessert at lunchtime. We didn't usually have it, but
this Oreo Cheesecake looked too good to resist.
Our pastry chef, Igor, doesn't actually like sweets,
but he's a wizard at making them!

The regional specialty at dinner was Sauerbraten with
Red Cabbage and Potato Dumplings. It was all delicious!

The Chocolate Buffet for dessert....

....and more..

A close-up. Igor showed us a photo of the
ship's wheel he had been creating for this
buffet, but it had broken and had to be replaced.
It would have been spectacular!

After dinner we sat outside and watched the developing sunset for a while. The best colours were actually at about 10:30, when we took the last 2 pictures from our stateroom window.

The cruise is slowing coming to an end. Tomorrow we will be near Amsterdam, in Utrecht, where we'll leave to visit the Floriade. The ship will pick us up again in Zaandam and we'll sail into Amsterdam for a 7:30 p.m. arrival.