August 7, 2019

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One of the things to do for Marion on this trip was to go to a German city on the Rhine. So off we went, and we invited Peter also, since he had not been this far into Germany yet. It’s only about a 75-minute drive, but the highway is quite busy with international trucking. We noticed almost right away when we entered Germany, that there looked to be more space and that land use was not as tightly organized. The highways too were not as numerous and had fewer interchanges. And believe it or not, the speed limits were a bit slower than the 130km/hr on most highways in the Netherlands.

We found a central parking space close to the Altstadt or old city. We walked though the area with numerous restaurants, probably one or more for every nationality that has a specialized cuisine. But we had our lunch in a city park, fresh sausage and cheese this time. We found the Königsallee street that Marion wanted to check out, and found that only very high-end stores lined this broad street with a canal in the middle. Nice walking though. After a while, we veered back towards the Rhine River and soon saw the Rhine Tower overlooking the entire city and the river. Too good to pass up an elevator ride 168 meters high, where we had some refreshments and took lots of photos of the world below us.

The walk along the river front led us to many beautiful terraces and untold bars and restaurants located up against the kasematen, probably what’s called casemates in English, which are essentially the old city walls that had enforcements built in to stave off invaders coming in from the Rhine.

As we had noted in Nijmegen, there’s a lot of traffic on this river. What was more surprising was the very strong flow of the water. Definitely not suited for swimming. When we approached the St. Lambertus church, we really noted its twisted tower, as you may notice from the pictures. The walk back to the car from here was interesting as we saw some cool building facades and statues. Clearly there are some areas left intact in this heavily bombed city at the end of WWII.

The GPS does not work well in tunnels as we found out when we first arrived and also when we tried to leave the city. It took several wrong turns before we could find our way, but once the signal returned, it was easy enough.

All in all a very good day today, and, we got our walking steps in today!

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Photos

Königsallee
Major shopping boulevard.

Shore line along the Rhine River
Note the church and museum in background

Museum
Not sure what kind of museum, but it’s an older building.

Marilyn Monroe selling beer?
Note the “foxy” face.