Cologne, Germany

My one friend and I planned a last minute trip to Germany:) We decided to go to Cologne, a smaller town in the west for multiple reasons, but the main one being that it was the cheapest.... #collegekid But it turned out to be a really amazing place.

Our first day we got there around 11 am, checked into our hostel and made our way back into the center of town to explore. We of course went in the main cathedral there, which was by far the most beautiful and absolutely ginormous one I have seen since being in Europe. It was stunning inside, with ceilings reaching up to outstanding heights. 

After our awe finally died down, we left and found our way to the Museum Ludwig and explored in there for a bit, looking at Picasso and Polke works. After the museum we went to the chocolate museum which overlooked the Rhine river. We walked by the sample lady so many times, ands kept giving us samples of the freshly made chocolate with a wafer:) There was a lot of history to read about there, but we skimmed over that part and then went to the main floor where they made the chocolate and stayed there for a while exploring all the machines and watching the whole process, which was really awesome! 

After that, it was later in the day, and we were pretty tired so we went back to the hostel. We started talking to some of the girls in our room and decided to make a German dinner together, and it turned out amazing. We made a pasta dish with zucchini and sun dried tomatoes with some oil. I ate so much of it, we hung out with the girls we met that night, drinking wine ( a lot of wine) and learning German games from some of the other girls staying there. It was the first time we really met people inner hostels because normally I travel in larger groups, so it was really cool to have that.

Day 2, my friend and I went to the Triangle which is a 30 floor building, that we took to the roof and got to view all of Cologne from above. It was such a nice day, so we got to see everything. After that, we had lunch in Rhine Park and hard core people watched for a while. 

We then made our way to Claudias Therme, a spa in Cologne. We paid to go in for 2 hours and got to swim in the thermal pools and sit in the sauna after. Everything about it was super relaxing and fun, until we went into the sauna.....no clothes allowed apparently. My friend and I tightly wrapped ourselves in our towels and made our way to the female sauna to see that not every women felt the same way we did about nudity in public. We had multiple women just drop their towels in front of us...interesting place to say the least. But the thermal pools themselves were very fun! 

After that, we got dinner on the Rhine of potato and goulash soup and bratwurst along with a nice cold Kolsch to end our second day here.

Our last day in Germany consisted of a lot of relaxing. The town is small, so we had seen most of it already. We decided to sleep in a bit and make our way into the center of town to go through the shopping district. We stopped in the center of Gross Martin and got pretzels and some more Kolsch's. After that, we spent the rest of the day walking down by the river, eating "spaghetti ice cream" and taking in all the beautiful buildings there.

Germany was an amazing place, and I would love to be able to see more of it one day:)