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[1] Autobahn
The start of our journey, leaving Bremen Our Castle Road Trip: section 1 --- the photos that correspond to the text are numbered etc. through to
(grab something to eat, sit down and relax --- there’s a bit of reading ahead)
Wednesday
The end of May was approaching fast and this meant our Road Trip was not far away.
It was Wednesday the 24th of May, and Roger went via Hamburg on his way home from work to collect our hire car - a Volkswagon Golf.
After some confusing one way streets and stop-start traffic on the autobahn he finally made it home at 9:15pm.
Thursday
Our alarm was set for 4:20am, and our excitement grew as we went to sleep.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Beep Beep…. It was 4:20am, and already light outside when we stumbled out of bed and got ready for our road trip. Planning to leave at 6:00am, we hurried to get ready and pack our belongings… which ended up taking longer than anticipated, resulting in our leaving time being 7:00am.
Driver in position and co-pilot ready, our first task was to navigate our way out of Bremen and onto the autobahn. A1 was our goal .
With this accomplished ,
[2] Thats Fast!
Speed Limit Free Zone! we followed the autobahn across the country side until we reached Köln, with the co-pilot, map in view, reassuring us that we were on the right track, noting every bridge we drover under/over and every parking stop we passed.
Successfully making it to Köln by 10:00am, we found a car park and started our touristy adventures. Our first stop was the information centre… and now with map in hand (and a bottle of 4711) --- we headed to the Dom , which is Europe’s largest Gothic Cathedral. We stood outside in awe of its size ( old Roman Arch way), then went inside to have a look . The sheer size of the cathedral was awesome . We stood taking in all the detail for some time , then discovered that visitors could climb to the top of the bell tower to see not only the bells in action (for 1€) but to also see an aerial view of Köln. So with 509 steps ahead of us we started our trek …
When the cathedral was built, back in the day, the stair cases spiralled around in anti clockwise direction with steps barely big enough to fit
[3] On our way...
on the right track to Koln your feet on… and this mammoth task was made even harder with the people descending the tower walking on the larger part of the steps. So we had the lovely task of stepping up 509 steps, each of which was approximately 10cm wide.
Reaching the bell tower - eventually, we stood and looked at the bells for some time , happy to have made it to the top . But little did we know, there were more steps to get to the viewing platform… so again we trekked up the spiralling staircase, and braved the chilling winds outside to take in the aerial view of Köln .
Once we had taken in the 360˚ views of Köln , we headed down the stairs back to ground level, determined to this time have the privilege of walking on the larger section of the steps.
Making to the bottom, with shaking legs and some what dizzy, we discovered that we were now allowed to view the whole cathedral and get up close to the sanctuary. We explored the cathedral some more , before deciding our stomachs needed some attention. We stoped off in a little bakery on the way back to
our car and chose what we thought might have been a traditional German cake. We do not know if it was or not, but it tasted good all the same!
Heading back to the car, we happy snapped some more of Köln .
Our next adventure was Nurburg… and the Nurburgring. Roger was determined to conquer this race track in our little hire car. Nearing 6pm and thinking we had missed our chance to race on the track, we finally found it, thanks to some German instructions we managed to roughly translate and remember. Racing towards the box office, as if we were on the Amazing Race, Roger returns to the car with a grin from ear to ear and a ticket in his hands. We drive through the car par and line up to take our turn on the track.
3, 2, 1… and we were off --- not to race, but to take a leisurely drive around the track . Averaging 60km around the track we were cheered on by on lookers and overtaken by BMWs et cetera. Completing the 26km of track and Roger happy to have driven on it we found a small service
station where we could by Nurburgring propaganda and souvenirs.
From here, our next destination was Koblenz. The town in which bot the Mosel River and the Rhine River meet. On our way there, we came across Maria Laach , which is a monastery in the countryside. We stopped to have a look before continuing to Koblenz.
Continuing our drive we arrived in Koblenz at 9.00pm and decided dinner was needed… and seeing McDonald’s we settled there for a meal.
With stomachs happy and legs tired we decided to find our first resting spot to stay the night.
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