What??? We're in Germany?
Yup!
Kevin and I had been talking awhile about doing some belated honeymoon travel (we only had a "mini-moon" and our friends' wedding cruise - which didn't count. :-)), and after considering such temperate destinations as New Zealand and Hawaii, we settled on gray, blustery Germany. Ok, we've only been here a day, so it's not fair to say yet that it's cold and blustery - that might just be today. But several years ago, I read an AAA article about German Christmas Market cruises, and we agreed it would be nice to do someday. This fall just felt like "someday" to us, so here we are, touring the Germany Christmas Markets, only by train instead of boat - much less expensive.
Before sunrise this morning, we arrived in Köln (Cologne). Which is not as early as it sounds - the sun was just rising as our train pulled into the Hauptbahnhof at 8:12 AM. After sleeping for less than 2 hours on the plane, we were so grateful that the nice folks at the Hilton Köln had a room available for us and let us check in at 8:30 AM. And our room is just so awesome. Sure, our window peers into the windows of an office building next door, but the room is really spacious, sleek and modern. Maybe I'll post some pictures tomorrow after our bed is made - we took a four hour nap!
We plan to explore Köln more closely tomorrow (predicted to be sunny and seasonable), but here's a peek at what we previewed today:
Now that it's almost 10PM German time but my body thinks it's 4PM (or does it?), I think I'd better attempt to get it on schedule by getting some sleep!
Okay, wait. You passed up NEW ZEALAND to go to Germany, where you've already been? Though, granted, not at Christmas. And not that there's anything WRONG with going to Germany multiple times. That's just assuming you're going to go to New Zealand eventually in your life. Martin Freeman is taking me to New Zealand on our Imaginary Honeymoon, though I don't know if that counts, since it's Imaginary, but the extent of my travel plans are pretty much Imaginary until the end of time so I might as well count it. ANYWAY, maybe it's better you put off New Zealand because while I think they're done FILMING on the Hobbiton set, I don't know if it's yet open for tourism yet, and one can't go to New Zealand without visiting Hobbiton, because that would be Wrong.
ReplyDeleteSO RIGHT. TALKING OF GERMANY. Um... have fun and rock rock on!
I know, it's weird. We got the New Zealand travel books out of the library and we're flipping through them...and just weren't inspired. We knew that if we're going to visit New Zealand (we actually have friends there) that NOW would be the best time, but we just, inexplicably, weren't feeling it. But when we started tossing German Christmas Markets around, we both just got really excited and it felt right.
ReplyDelete