Although we strung a clothesline last night and hung all our wet clothing early last evening, most of it is not dry this morning. We made sure the heating fan ran all night, and we had the heat up, although we couldn't tell it was providing any heat. Regardless, we put on the dry clothes we had and prepared to head to downtown Cologne for a day of site seeing. We had slept in a bit, and were slow moving. It wasn't until 9:45 am that we made it out the door, onto our bikes and on our way to town. The Budget Ibis, our hotel, was about a mile east of the downtown core. We were surprised at how cool the air temperature was this morning, 46°. We were clad in coats and long pants as we headed to town.
Breakfast had been a bit skimpy, so our first step was a bakery in the square near the cathedral to do a pastry. After that, a quick ride of a few blocks brought us to the cathedral square. We locked up our bikes to a fence and headed to the spire climb. 10:00 am may be late for Sally and I, but the rest of the tourist world isn't moving about at this time of the morning. There was no line to the stairs leading up to the top of the spires of the cathedral. We worked our way up the stairs, stopping to look out the few windows in this spiral staircase. We could see, up close, the gothic stone work attached to the outside walls of the cathedral. It is all stained black, giving the cathedral a dark and uninviting look. We climbed past the belfry, figuring we would see it on the way back down. Once at the highest point possible, we were able to walk around the entire spire, viewing the city below, but also, the cathedral below and all the stone works. It was nice not to be in a hurry. We hung around, inspecting the magnificent work and admiring the sheer size and audacity of its construction. Looking out at the "gingerbread" of stone carvings clinging to the building and realizing those thousands of tons of stone have to be supported and to be raised up to this level, gave us a respect for the tenacity of the builders.
On our way down, we stopped at the belfry. There were about seven or eight bells hanging, the largest about 15' in diameter. As it was 11:45 am, we debated whether to wait for the noon ringing. We really wanted to see the bells in action, but feared for the safety of our eardrums once the cacophony started. We decided to stay. The large bell was not employed and only three of the smaller ones were rung. That was loud enough.
Once we descended the spire, we planned to enter the cathedral, but the sounds of Vivaldi's "Winter", from his four seasons was wafting across the square. We decided to investigate. What we found was magnificent. Two accordion players and a violinist were playing for change. The three of them did Vivaldi justice. View one of their song I recorded at this site: coming soon
After that distraction, we finally entered the cathedral. It was magnificent, but by this time in our trip we had walked thru at least 20 large cathedrals. The magic of wandering past those magnificent columns supporting the atmospheric roof is awe inspiring. It reminds me of walking through a sequoia grove, the trunks of the trees soaring skyward.
We rode our bikes to a Kabab place for lunch. We split a sandwich, and packed another one for dinner tonight.
Luckily, the Chocolate museum is just a few minutes from the cathedral. We were in the door in short order. All aspects of the politics, biology and science of chocolate production are thoroughly covered. We spent over an hour touring the museum. It was great.
We made a trip down the waterfront to see what we had missed riding past it in the rain yesterday, then headed away from the river a few blocks to a grocery store. We stocked up for dinner, breakfast and lunch tomorrow, then returned to the hotel.
We spent the evening in our room, watching the BBC and blogging - and resting.
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