Evenings Exploring Cologne, Germany

Cologne Cathedral is as amazing as they said it would be!

I’d seen it briefly when we arrived by train the night before but didn’t have much time to explore it (nor would I have wanted to with our luggage in tow) so I was justifiably excited to finally get to see it properly (especially considering how this was the first sight we’d planned earlier in the day before getting distracted by chocolate).

When you’re in Cologne, you can climb right up to the top of the cathedral but we arrived too late to do so and figured we might as well pop in quickly anyway before heading out for lunch! (Also, not sure if I could have scaled that impressive height with the hunger pangs I had at the point in time).

Lunch, which was almost certainly ‘dinner’ by the time we arrived was at Früh – home to Cologne’s famous Kölsch (beer)! This Brauhaus, which is over 100 years old, came very highly recommended for its food and German beer has quite the reputation (plus it’s just round the corner from the Cathedral) so it was a no-brainer really.

We started off with a couple of beers (which come in the tiniest glasses I’ve ever seen 🙂 ) before decided to have both lunch and dinner at the same time! 🙂

We both had bratwurst for lunch and Lloyd went for ghoulash for dinner and I went for a pickled pork with sauerkraut and creamy mashed potatoes. The pickled pork sounds like a very odd choice (to be fair, I was mis-led by Lloyd into believing this was a must-have dish) but it was actually really REALLY good! I just assumed when someone says something is picked, it means its been soaking in vinegar and hence tastes simply of vinegar but thankfully, this was not the case!

Post dinner plans involved returning back to the fairground, after a jaunt through the city in search of dessert…

The fairground and its shiny lights called from across the river and before long, we found ourselves in the neon-coloured, toffee apple-filled, carnival-like fairground where we for a few hours, the inner-child in me ran amok!

Eventually, it was time to head back home to the hotel but by this point, I decided I had to have dinner number two – running around a fairground works up quite the appetite! (That’s my excuse anyway).

We pretty much just hopped aboard the tram (there are no Ubers here though there is a city taxi app worth getting if you’d rather travel via taxi) and pretty much stopped at whatever neighbourhood we went past that seemed have decent restaurants.

As luck would have it, our instincts proved us right and we ended up in the rather trendy Belgian quarter. This place reminds me of Shoreditch in London in so many ways but this time, I wasn’t going to get distracted by exploring and instead headed straight for food.

I wish I could tell you the name of the specific place we had food but I don’t think I even checked – we just walked in once we liked the look of the menu.

A delicious meal and a couple of glasses of wine later, we trudged back to the hotel, knackered but thoroughly impressed with Cologne and looking forward to the special event running across the city the following night.