Day 21: Cologne

First thing I did this morning was go to the Dom Cathedral. It was mostly empty when I got there at 8:30am so I walked around for about 45 minutes and took some pictures. I noticed they had a guided tour at 10:30am so I went to a camera store which was right next door to the cathedral to kill some time. I bought a tripod and circular polarizer, which turned out to be fairly expensive but I think they will be worth it.

The tour guide did a pretty good job. The tour lasted about an hour and covered the history and architecture of the cathedral. The relic for Cologne’s Cathedral is the gifts of the three magi. They are kept in a large gold-plated box at the end of the cathedral. Not sure if I believe it or not, but it looked pretty impressive nonetheless. After the tour, I climbed the 509 steps to the top of the south tower. It took about 30 minutes of climbing a circular staircase to reach the top. The view was pretty impressive with panoramic views of the whole city.

After the cathedral, I was going to rent a bike and ride around the city, but the bike shop was closed. Instead, I walked around taking pictures, and then went back to my hostel to check my email. I waited for the sun to set (around 9:15pm) and walked to the other side of the Hohenzollernbrücke, a bridge spanning across the Rhine. From that perspective, you can get some really good pictures of the cathedral reflecting over the water with the sunset in the background. I ate dinner at the Hyatt restaurant which was right on the river with the cathedral on the opposite bank. I managed to get some good pictures, but I’ll need to do some editing on them. That’s going to have to wait another 2 months until I get my Macbook Pro. It’s going to take me a couple weeks to go through all the pictures I’ve taken and edit them so that’s what I’ll be doing throughout the month of August. I’ll post pictures as I can but because they are so big, it is hard to find time to upload them all.

Tomorrow I am planning on visiting a Nazi Museum about Cologne and then rent a bike in the afternoon. It is expected to rain so hopefully I won’t get too wet.