Germany

We had another fantastic weekend away. We left here on Friday afternoon and took the northern route through Belgium, The Netherlands and into Germany. Traffic was fairly heavy because so many people were going away for the weekend and there was a lot of road construction. Our first stop was in Düsseldorf. We stayed in one of Lori's famous Hotwire purchases. This one turned out to be the Hotel Nikko, which is a Japanese Hotel. So our first night in Germany we didn't have sauerkraut and bratwurst, but we did have some really good sushi. The room was unreal. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say the hotel room was considerably larger than our apartment. They should provide a Segway with this room.

Saturday was not filled with your typical tourist outings. We ended up shopping at Ikea. We needed a few things for the apartment and it's difficult to get to an Ikea in Paris without a car so when we passed one on the highway we decided to put the rental car to good use and filled it up with cheap but functional furniture.

Later in the day, we stopped in Cologne to visit the Cathedral and walk along the river. The Cathedral is very impressive. While we were there, we read that it is Germany's most visited landmark. I found it a little odd that such an impressive Catholic Cathedral is located in a Lutheran country but construction started in 1248, almost 300 years before the Protestant Reformation.

Eventually we made it to our next destination, Bad Kreuznach. It's a nice little town on a small river and we stayed at another nice hotel. What we didn't know about this town was it has many spas and salt baths used as therapeutic retreats. Needless to say the town was a little sleepy and we were two of the younger guests.

We did find a great little family restaurant for some real German cuisine. Everywhere else in Germany people spoke English very well and we didn't have a problem. It was a little tougher here. The owners of the restaurant didn't speak any English, but we were able to point and gesture enough to get by and they were wonderful. We thought it was hilarious when they used my coaster as a bill. Every time they brought a beer or some food to the table, they would just write the price on the coaster.

At the end of the night, they just added up our coaster and we paid our bill. The food was great and we really enjoyed ourselves so we left a nice tip. It might have been bigger than they were used to because he wouldn't let us leave until we each had a shot of Ouzo on the house.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about our river cruise on the Rhine. It was spectacular.

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