{"id":26479,"date":"2014-09-30T15:26:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=26479"},"modified":"2014-10-01T13:41:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T18:41:18","slug":"cologne-day-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=26479","title":{"rendered":"Cologne Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Cologne Day 2 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Woke up today, and I am not leaving the hotel until it’s time to eat lunch damnit! I felt a little overwhelmed yesterday for some reason. Today, trying to slow everything down a little.<\/p>\n

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\nApparently, our hotel is the center of the world.<\/p>\n

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\nParking is at a premium here, so they’ve got all sorts of neat parking contraptions.<\/p>\n

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\nThe plan is to eat somewhere around our hotel, then grab our dirty laundry back at the hotel and go find a laundromat.<\/p>\n

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\nFirst customers in the restaurant! While we are here, a couple of Asians came and sat down at the next table and I thought they were tourists, until they started speaking perfect German. We would end up hearing other Asians in Cologne speak German as well. Not so much the case in Munich.<\/p>\n

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\nAll in German, but then they eventually gave us an English menu.<\/p>\n

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\nI ordered water, and it came out sparkling. Damn you Germans and your sparkling water. But, I guess it isn’t too terrible.<\/p>\n

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\nYelp did us right by this one, the food was really good. Who knew German Yelp was any good.<\/p>\n

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\nBack to our hotel for our laundry. This view of our hotel looks so much less depressing than the front view.<\/p>\n

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\nBack to the immigrant neighborhood. Apparently there’s a laundromat here. This place seems less sketchy in the day time.<\/p>\n

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\nFound.<\/p>\n

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\nA touchscreen panel to operate the washing machines.<\/p>\n

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\nAs we were trying to figure out how to work the machines, this man in this photo unsolicited started to help us with it. People of Cologne, you are awesome for being nice. We love you.<\/p>\n

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\nAs we sat in the laundromat waiting for our laundry to get done, guess who walks in?!? None other than the busking accordion player (seen behind us in the leather jacket) from yesterday!!! He came in, got a cup of cheap coffee from the vending machine and left. What are the chances that we’d see him here!!<\/p>\n

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\nWhile laundry is getting done, I’ll catch up on some blogging.<\/p>\n

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\nGerman laundromat dryers are the best. It took us less than 20 minutes to dry our clothes, where it’s been my experience in the past that it usually takes closer to one hour.<\/p>\n

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\nThere were several dress shops here offering these kind of outlandish dresses.<\/p>\n

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\nNow that laundry is done, time to walk around town.<\/p>\n

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\nFirst, we take a stroll to the perfume shop where the original Cologne started.<\/p>\n

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\nProtestors, I’ll agree with this protest. Well, I wouldn’t say they are protesting as much as drumming up for more support.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This man was fixing\/maintaining the spire topper model. It seems like he’s putting glue or caulk on it.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
\nFound the shop that produced the original Cologne, since 1709. The tour ladies from yesterday told us about it. They were so awesome and nice.<\/p>\n

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\nJewish ruins next to the tour office from yesterday. We were told that in typical Cologne fashion, this work has been ongoing for years and will still be ongoing for even more years. Bureaucracy permeates all.<\/p>\n

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\nWe walked and reached the Rhine river.<\/p>\n

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\nSat in this nice little courtyard in front of a small church and relaxed a little. Europe can be so nice when you just want to sit around and chill. This feels nice, slowly strolling around.<\/p>\n

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\nPark by the Rhine.<\/p>\n

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\nBubbles.<\/p>\n

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\nThe church next to the courtyard we sat by earlier. Well, I said small church because everything seems small here compared to the massive cathedral.<\/p>\n

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\nHunger and thirst strikes, time to sit down at a cafe.<\/p>\n

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\nView from our seats. Very nice and very relaxing.<\/p>\n

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\nCheese plate.<\/p>\n

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\nI was on a mission, and mission accomplished. I didn’t want to leave Germany without having apple strudel at least once. Yum!<\/p>\n

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\nTime to walk again. Found this odd cobble stone.<\/p>\n

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\nLooks so incredible.<\/p>\n

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\nCologne main station.<\/p>\n

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\nFree Palestin!!! I found it funny that they started erasing it, but then the solvant erased the photo as well so they abandoned the effort. Hah.<\/p>\n

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\nLook at all those spires!!!<\/p>\n

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\nOh you know, we’ll just use some pieces of the cathedral that we replaced as a stopper to prevent vehicles from entering.<\/p>\n

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\nOur paths cross again, the accordion player from earlier and yesterday. He seemed so sad…I wish he was playing, I would have tipped him again.<\/p>\n

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\nPlease don’t break and fall down on me while I take this photo.<\/p>\n

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\nInteresting way to carve the fur on the lamb.<\/p>\n

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\nSeriously amazing stone work.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
\nThe anti ISIS rally is still going on when we started heading back to our hotel. A nap sounds good…or maybe we’ll just watch some BoJack Horseman.<\/p>\n

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\nThe depressing front facade of our hotel.<\/p>\n

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\nAs we rested in the hotel watching Netflix, I heard this sound outside. It has started raining. Good timing on our part on getting back to our hotel before the rain showed up.<\/p>\n

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\nDinner time, it’s raining, so we didn’t want to go far. RL suggested that we eat at the Chinese restaurant a block away from our hotel….I guess….Maybe the Chinese food would be ok in Cologne since they seem to have a local population of Chinese immigrants.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s a good sign when you show up and almost the entire restaurant is filled with people speaking Mandarin. Out of all the Asians who I see around Germany, I hear Taiwanese quite often, and it’s also the case here in the restaurant.<\/p>\n

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\nGiant menus with beautiful photos, just like that DaDong(sp?) duck restaurant that we went to in Beijing.<\/p>\n

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\nVEGETABLES!!!!! YES!!!!<\/p>\n

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\nYes!!! Marinated pork belly.<\/p>\n

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\nEggplant in hotpot!!!<\/p>\n

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\nSesame balls!!!<\/p>\n

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\nSo how does Chinese food taste in Cologne? Amazing, actually!!! I’d say this food tasted better than half of the Chinese food restaurant we ate at in China itself!!! We were both pleasantly surprised by the quality and authenticity of the food. The best part, we had tons of left overs so we’ll take the leftovers to keep on our fridge inside our hotel for lunch tomorrow.<\/p>\n

After storing our food away in the fridge, we wanted to head out once more and check out the cathedral at night. It’s still raining, so getting a good photo without exposing our camera to rain might be a bit tricky.<\/p>\n

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\nHoly Batman. So Gothic at night.<\/p>\n

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\nThe birds flying on top of the church lit up at night. Creepy but awesome.<\/p>\n

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\nThe rain has picked up.<\/p>\n

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\nThe photos that we could get of the church was determined by where we could find shelter from the rain, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
\nAmazing balls, but it’s time to get out of the rain.<\/p>\n

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\nBack in the dry walking through the main station.<\/p>\n

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\nGoodnight Cologne. Tomorrow, we say goodbye and head to Amsterdam. Sad to leave a city that has treated us so warmly.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Amsterdam Day 1 Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Cologne Day 2 Part 2. Woke up today, and I am not leaving the hotel until it’s time to eat lunch damnit! I felt a little overwhelmed yesterday for some reason. Today, trying to slow everything down a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25888,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26479","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26740,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26479\/revisions\/26740"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}