Cologne Day 3

Continued from Cologne Day 2 Part 2.

Woke up today, and I am not leaving the hotel until it’s time to eat lunch damnit! I felt a little overwhelmed yesterday for some reason. Today, trying to slow everything down a little.

Apparently, our hotel is the center of the world.

Parking is at a premium here, so they’ve got all sorts of neat parking contraptions.

The plan is to eat somewhere around our hotel, then grab our dirty laundry back at the hotel and go find a laundromat.

First customers in the restaurant! While we are here, a couple of Asians came and sat down at the next table and I thought they were tourists, until they started speaking perfect German. We would end up hearing other Asians in Cologne speak German as well. Not so much the case in Munich.

All in German, but then they eventually gave us an English menu.

I ordered water, and it came out sparkling. Damn you Germans and your sparkling water. But, I guess it isn’t too terrible.

Yelp did us right by this one, the food was really good. Who knew German Yelp was any good.

Back to our hotel for our laundry. This view of our hotel looks so much less depressing than the front view.

Back to the immigrant neighborhood. Apparently there’s a laundromat here. This place seems less sketchy in the day time.

Found.

A touchscreen panel to operate the washing machines.

As we were trying to figure out how to work the machines, this man in this photo unsolicited started to help us with it. People of Cologne, you are awesome for being nice. We love you.

As we sat in the laundromat waiting for our laundry to get done, guess who walks in?!? None other than the busking accordion player (seen behind us in the leather jacket) from yesterday!!! He came in, got a cup of cheap coffee from the vending machine and left. What are the chances that we’d see him here!!

While laundry is getting done, I’ll catch up on some blogging.

German laundromat dryers are the best. It took us less than 20 minutes to dry our clothes, where it’s been my experience in the past that it usually takes closer to one hour.

There were several dress shops here offering these kind of outlandish dresses.

Now that laundry is done, time to walk around town.

First, we take a stroll to the perfume shop where the original Cologne started.

Protestors, I’ll agree with this protest. Well, I wouldn’t say they are protesting as much as drumming up for more support.

This man was fixing/maintaining the spire topper model. It seems like he’s putting glue or caulk on it.

Found the shop that produced the original Cologne, since 1709. The tour ladies from yesterday told us about it. They were so awesome and nice.

Jewish ruins next to the tour office from yesterday. We were told that in typical Cologne fashion, this work has been ongoing for years and will still be ongoing for even more years. Bureaucracy permeates all.

We walked and reached the Rhine river.

Sat in this nice little courtyard in front of a small church and relaxed a little. Europe can be so nice when you just want to sit around and chill. This feels nice, slowly strolling around.

Park by the Rhine.

Bubbles.

The church next to the courtyard we sat by earlier. Well, I said small church because everything seems small here compared to the massive cathedral.

Hunger and thirst strikes, time to sit down at a cafe.

View from our seats. Very nice and very relaxing.

Cheese plate.

I was on a mission, and mission accomplished. I didn’t want to leave Germany without having apple strudel at least once. Yum!

Time to walk again. Found this odd cobble stone.

Looks so incredible.

Cologne main station.

Free Palestin!!! I found it funny that they started erasing it, but then the solvant erased the photo as well so they abandoned the effort. Hah.

Look at all those spires!!!

Oh you know, we’ll just use some pieces of the cathedral that we replaced as a stopper to prevent vehicles from entering.

Our paths cross again, the accordion player from earlier and yesterday. He seemed so sad…I wish he was playing, I would have tipped him again.

Please don’t break and fall down on me while I take this photo.

Interesting way to carve the fur on the lamb.

Seriously amazing stone work.

The anti ISIS rally is still going on when we started heading back to our hotel. A nap sounds good…or maybe we’ll just watch some BoJack Horseman.

The depressing front facade of our hotel.

As we rested in the hotel watching Netflix, I heard this sound outside. It has started raining. Good timing on our part on getting back to our hotel before the rain showed up.

Dinner time, it’s raining, so we didn’t want to go far. RL suggested that we eat at the Chinese restaurant a block away from our hotel….I guess….Maybe the Chinese food would be ok in Cologne since they seem to have a local population of Chinese immigrants.

It’s a good sign when you show up and almost the entire restaurant is filled with people speaking Mandarin. Out of all the Asians who I see around Germany, I hear Taiwanese quite often, and it’s also the case here in the restaurant.

Giant menus with beautiful photos, just like that DaDong(sp?) duck restaurant that we went to in Beijing.

VEGETABLES!!!!! YES!!!!

Yes!!! Marinated pork belly.

Eggplant in hotpot!!!

Sesame balls!!!

So how does Chinese food taste in Cologne? Amazing, actually!!! I’d say this food tasted better than half of the Chinese food restaurant we ate at in China itself!!! We were both pleasantly surprised by the quality and authenticity of the food. The best part, we had tons of left overs so we’ll take the leftovers to keep on our fridge inside our hotel for lunch tomorrow.

After storing our food away in the fridge, we wanted to head out once more and check out the cathedral at night. It’s still raining, so getting a good photo without exposing our camera to rain might be a bit tricky.

Holy Batman. So Gothic at night.