Cologne, Germany

Karrina’s Diary

Thanks to our new found Greek barmaid friend, we all woke with thick heads – McDonalds was needed.

A quick pack up saw us set off for a relatively long drive to Cologne via a McDonalds. On the drive into Bad Schornborn we had seen McDonalds or Burger Kings every few miles but as soon as we wanted one there were none to be found! At last a KFC, we pulled in and let the non English speaking server pick our food for us as trying to explain what we wanted was impossible, it would be pot luck – chicken and chips how hard could it be. Luckily all was good and stuffed full we set back off to Cologne.

Our stopover in Cologne turned out easy to find, very close to the city and next to the river. The site itself is actually right at the entrance to the zoo, as we pulled in we all made an effort to distract Lucy as this time we would not have time to visit the zoo we will definitely be coming back.

We parked up in an odd space, the last space left and were trying to get level when a friendly Swiss lady in the Campervan next to us came to tell us they were leaving in the next 10 minutes, we hoped they were leaving anyway and not because we arrived!

On the drive in I did a little bit of research to look for things to do particularly for Lucy, the last few days had been less kid friendly so we felt today could be her turn. First on the to do list was the Cologne cable car, I read an article from the Daily Telegraph from October 2014 all about a young American family who were rescued from the cable car after several hours being trapped, they were lucky enough to get a free abseil down 😁😳 The news paper story fully put Amy off as if she wasn’t already so her and Garf would be walking.

The cable car was awesome, for €4.50 we went over the River Rhine and got a nice view of Cologne. We also got quite a shocking view as Lucy said look there’s a nude man we realised the cable car went over a naturist spa 😳

Whilst on the cable car we spotted a miniature railway, Lucy declared we would be going on this so off we set to find the station. With no idea where the train would take us we boarded and hoped for the best. It was our lucky day and the train took us towards the main city where we had agreed to meet back up with Amy and Garf. We were on the train for a while and excitedly waved at everyone we passed, we only got one return wave- misery guts! As we got off the train the kind German train driver did his best to give us direction to the city by pointing at the huge Cathedral I think we could have worked that out for ourselves.

The short walk to town saw us cross a huge bridge with padlocks as far as you could see, they seemed to go on forever. Lucy tried to read the names on some but soon became bored.

Another Hard Rock Cafe conquered and a hurricane glass added to the collection, I will definitely require a new shelf in the kitchen now. Previously I mistakenly ordered a Strawberry Mojito but I wasn’t going to risk not liking my cocktail again so I played safe with sex on the beach, it was yum.

We strolled round the city for a while comparing it to London, not a lot to compare really but we did find the China town and eventually The Aldstradt which was a bit like The West End. After dinner Lucy spotted the London Eye, for Easter Cologne had a travelling fun fair. Thankfully although it was the wrong side of the river there was a bridge so to the fair we would go.

It really was Lucy’s lucky day, she was in heaven at the fair. The big wheel was a must for us but again Amy would not participate. We purchased our wheel tickets and climbed aboard our smiles soon turned to fear as the operator spun us as we left and we could not find any safety belts or doors for the gondola. I giggled with laughter to avoid crying, Lucy was completely oblivious to danger so loved it and Neil was a nervous wreck three goes round really was enough.

We left the fair after winning some junk on the tombola and hook a duck then hailed a taxi to take us to bed, Cologne was a success and we will definitely return.