My wife, Chrissy, travels for work. She usually travels with a colleague or on her own and I stay home with the kids. However, for a conference to Cologne Germany in November we decided that we would leverage her work covered airfare and hotel to do a family trip.
We had a lot of hesitations. Our girls don't like to eat anything, they fight us on leaving the house and then often when at a destination fight us not to leave. Plus, sleep is always a challenge. Some palpable parent dread...but what the hell, you only live once.
We committed ourselves to going hoping that it would be a great learning experience for the kids and to help me fight off my own mid-life crisis of being too comfortable.
The kids got only maybe an hour or two of sleep on the airplane but they did remarkably well for the flight to Frankfurt and then the train to Cologne. Certainly off to a good start.
Highlights from our time in Cologne below:
Cologne Cathedral
I have read about and seen pictures of the Cathedral for years but was still immensely impressed by the structure.
- It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day.
- One time tallest building in the world
- Today at 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe and the third tallest church of any kind in the world.
Chocolate Museum
Cologne Carnival / St. Martins Day
In Cologne the Carnival season is declared open at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th of the 11th month. It is a big party that day and weekend and then the Carnival spirit is then temporarily suspended during the Advent and Christmas period. You may notice the day being November 11th and the time being when a moment of silence is held in our native Canada for Remembrance Day. As a Canadian with German heritage I carry some embedded shame every Remembrance Day so it was surreal to see crazy revelry on what is usually a solemn day. As good tourists we headed out to the main square near the Cathedral to see all the people in costume (that's a thing) and having a good time. Fortuitously we ended up finding a fenced portion of space right in the thick of it to help keep the kids safe and just took it all in. Brass bands leading sing alongs, adults from 16-60 in groups costumes, tons of beer with many willing to share.Cologne Zoo
The Cologne Zoo is the third oldest zoo in Germany it features over 10,000 animals of more than 850 species. It is big and awesome!Highlights were the cool amount of birds I had never seen before, a massive elephant area with multiple pachyderms, giant apes, hippos, rhino, an anteater (I never saw one before) and some comical baboons who were putting on a show.
Eventually we just let the kids play and the park and Chrissy and myself just grabbed a coffee and watched the many elephants directly beside the park. Pretty cool.
- Watching the world go by from the Hotels corner spot (especially the people heading to the main square for Carnival)
- Walking along the Rhine daily and spotting parrots in the trees
- The bones and beautiful interior of St. Ursula Church
- Wandering the city between playgrounds, and finding some near cool old medieval walls (the girls like to point that I peed on that wall when I couldn't find a washroom)
- Turkish food -- The largest group of foreign nationals in Cologne are from Turkey. There are many great locations to get Turkish cuisine.
- Traditional German food and drink
Pork Knuckle |
Schnitzel with a fried egg is apparently the Cologne way to serve |
Kölsch beer, the bigger the better |
- Sightseeing through the Alstadt (Old Town). I happened to really like this photo.