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DAY 3: COLOGNE

 

Day by Day

To learn more about each port of call and our included as well as optional excursions, click on the individual days below.


This is Day 4 on the Viking Tir, and we are in Koblenz, Germany.  Yesterday was a stop in Cologne.  The evening before we were in Kinderdijk, where we had pre-dinner drinks of Kir and Champagne, with snacks.

Gouda cheese soup and a kind of light pizza, followed by an excellent fried ahi.  Certainly doesn't look it, and would have been better with rice, but...

Then dancing to piano music.
2033 steps on Day 2, only because of the above.
Lunch of cream of broccoli soup, mixed salad and a bolognese pasta, with a draft German beer.
Bus tour of Cologne.
An outhouse.
The Colonius tellecommunications tower (873 feet tall).
The second highest is the fabled Cologne Cathedral at 516 feet.
Return to the Viking Tir.

  • Surprisingly enough, YES.
Take a walk through the Old Town to 4711 Glockengasse, which claims to be the birthplace of the original Eau de Cologne (Germans call it "Kölnisch Wasser"). In 1810, the inventor stopped calling it medicine and started marketing it as a perfume, putting Cologne on the map. Locals claim Eau de Cologne was the first perfume based on alcohol (86 percent alcohol; the rest is herbal fragrances). The original "Cologne Water" runs in a fountain by the door.

  • The saying here is that Cologne is Germany's mix of perfume, chocolate and God.
  • Called Köln in Germany, the home of the country's greatest Gothic cathedral.

Otherwise, about Cologne.
  • With 3.1 million people in the urban region German'y 4th largest metro area.
  • The city regained pre-war population in 1959, reached 1 million in 1975, and remains at that number today.
  • The city was founded in 38 BC, and was for awhile the capital of the Roman province in Germany.
  • Has 30 museums and hundreds of galleries.
  • Hosts three Max Planck science institutes.
  • Is the headquarters of Lufthansa.
  • Cologne was the focus of the 2015-16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, with over 500 women reporting that they were sexually assaulted by persons of African and Arab appearance.[35][36]
  • Has a thriving Christmas market, which we did not see,
  • Actually some cities began on November 15.
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