After a late night at the Christmas markets the night before at least the 4 of us in our apartment all slept in until almost 9am. It helps that it is super dark until well after 8.30am! Poor Soren, who was in an apartment downstairs with Alan and Kim was messaging about coming up for breakfast since about 8am….
We’d decided to do a day trip to Dusseldorf, which is 40km North of Cologne. The ICE (inter-city express) trains take only 30 minutes (in theory) but were super expensive, so we went on one of the slightly slower regional trains, that should have only taken us about 45 minutes. Somehow our train stopped a lot and then it was supposed to go through to Dusseldorf airport but it decided to stop at the HBF….. This is where we wanted to get off anyway, but it was funny seeing people randomly jump off when they realised. Our German was good enough to follow about 2/3 of the messages and then guess the rest….
Our tour of the local countryside was not all that exciting but we did see plenty of chemical and pharmaceutical factories, which are rather common in the area. It was rather grey and cold outside at 3 degrees.
Off in search of Christmas markets….
Our late start to the morning and the slow train trip meant we didn’t arrive into Dusseldorf until almost 11.30am. Once we left the train station there were Christmas market stalls popping up almost immediately.
Dusseldorf is the second most populous city (after Cologne) in the North Rhine – Westphalia German state, and is also the capital city. We walked from the HBF through the busy city area down towards the old town and marktplatz and found plenty of delicious things in shop windows to tempt us.
Pretty soon we we hit the first of the Christmas markets. Dusseldorf has around 11 Christmas markets but they are all very close to each other, one market literally backing into the next. So you can market for kilometres on end.
As it was still early the markets were just getting going, so we had a little wander through some of them, checking out the different food, drinks and crafts.
We wandered down to the harbour to check out the views across the Rhine. Dusseldorf is a popular river cruise ship stop so there were plenty of boats docked. The kids were trying to pick out which one they’d like to go on when we win lotto 😉
We decided to do a little sightseeing down at the harbour area, checking out the different buildings and a mix of modern and older architecture.
Like Cologne, each market has it’s own themed huts and decorations, and of course different glühwein mugs. We noticed the prices were slightly cheaper than Cologne, by approx 0.50 Euro cents on most items. With hungry and cold kids and delicious smells, you could still spend a fortune pretty quickly.
Soren was living his best market life, finding delicious food and eyeing off all the entertainment.
A few of the markets ran along the waterfront area, so we market hopped and checked out the view on the other side of the river. Where there were quite a few pretty houses. Anto and I concluded we’d like to return to Dusseldorf in warm weather and casually ride around this area when it was a tad more sunny 😉
In search of food and warmth….
There were definitely a few spots that were rather pretty and the smells coming from some of the stalls were a bit too delicious for our hungry tummies. This was the coldest day we’d had on our trip so far and a rather chilly apparent temperature of below zero. The vote by the masses was to wander to a restaurant for lunch where we could warm up for a bit……
It was back through the old town and in search of somewhere we could sit down and was also warm. We found an interesting burger place that had very tasty food at not ridiculous prices and most importantly free toilets! We all inhaled our food, obviously hungry from the cold.
Konigsallee shopping street and more markets….
Feeling warmer and with some calories on board, it was back to the markets to check out a few we’d hurried through on our walk down to the waterfront. We head towards the Konigsallee shopping strip.
We again found the really awesome Steiff Christmas windows. We’d admired these the day before in Cologne. The Dusseldorf set-ups were different but just as entertaining. I highly recommend checking them out if you are in Germany at Christmas time. They are very clever!
Zinnia had been tired before our lunch stop but food and a sit down helped a bit. The kids quickly found another market with ice-skating but we had to convince them it wasn’t going to be a long skate as we had to head back to Cologne, so they were better off waiting until tomorrow in Cologne. They were not impressed!
In search of Glühwein and mugs….
Then we wandered through some more markets, on the hunt for the perfect place for glühwein. We’d seen some pretty awesome mugs on our wanders and we had to decide which one we wanted (it’s all about the mugs ).
In the meantime we came across a giant panda and the kids and Kim all got a nice warming hug!
It was only 3pm, but already close to dusk so the lights looked pretty at the markets. We settled on an appropriate mug choice, filled with some white glühwein. The kids conned warm crepes out of us, since they were apparently both starving and freezing….
Back to Cologne we go…
We had walked many kilometres through the markets and there were some we didn’t even get to!
I wasn’t feeling particularly cold, even though it hadn’t gotten above 3 degrees. I had clearly acclimatised from our hot Canberra weather, but the rest of the family were cold and voted it time to head back to Cologne.
We walked back to the train station and thankfully only had a short wait for the train. Like the morning train, the 40 minute trip was significantly longer than it should have been and the train randomly stopped a lot!
Well over an hour into the trip we got an announcement (in German) that the train was now stopping and not going through to the HBF. We thought we were in an outer suburb of Cologne. Anto’s phone hadn’t updated our location and was saying a 52 minute walk back to the apartment. Cue a lot of sighs from everyone and us trying to work out which other train or tram we needed to catch. As we jumped off the train we spied the giant cathedral. Admittedly you can see the Kolner Dom from quite a distance but our apartment was very close to the cathedral, so it turns out it was only a short walk after all.
On our trip back towards the apartment we happened past the old city walls, which looked pretty all lit up. That was on the agenda to check out again the following day, when we had a bit more daylight and energy.
We made it back the the apartment by 5.30pm. Everyone voted for dinner in the warmth after a big day out. Anto whipped us up some pasta, käsespätzle and salad and then it was a few games of UNO before the kids collapsed into bed by 8. We have a final day in Cologne to continue our quest to taste test our way through the markets, and satisfy the kids need to ice skate!
Up next…
Views from the top of the cathedral, more markets, the long awaited first ice skate and a Christmas cruise on the Rhine river……
