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Great night's sleep, the gentleness of the boat must suit us, sunny and again cloudy, not as windy today but only 12c.
We are now in Germany and on the Rhine River, having been motoring all night, early morning we passed by Leverkusen, where Bayer's head office and one of its main factory plants is. It's a huge industrial area and I did see the multi storey office tower that was decorated as a huge Aspirin packet to celebrate the 100 year anniversary on the discovery of Aspirin. I was still working for Bayer at this time and it was celebrated worldwide by Bayer employee's being such a huge medical discovery and the basis for many other drugs.
After breakfast we are going ashore in Cologne for a walking tour of the city and to see the magnificent cathedral. We have our audio systems, which is about the size of a mobile phone and when you turn it on you can immediately hear the guide talking telling you all the information of whatever you are looking at. Very handy, leaves your hands free, there are two in each cabin with a charger ready for the next day's tour.
We walked along the river for a while with our guide and watched our boat motor on down the river, we will meet it further down river at Bonn.
The city of Cologne is the 4th largest of Germany's cities sitting along the Rhine River with just over a million in population. Founded by the Romans in 50 BC, today there are lots of archaeology digs taking place all over the city, finding buried Roman treasures and old Roman structures several metres below the current city street level. During WW11 most of Cologne was bombed and has been rebuilt some as it was, but most as new post war structures. Fortunately the magnificent Gothic Cathedral suffered little WW11 damage standing tall in the centre of the city. It was the tallest building in Europe until the Eiffel Tower was constructed.
After an hour's free time to wander and browse, we met our coaches at the designated spot and were driven for an hour through the pretty green countryside to the Kennedy Bridge in Bonn (Yes named after JFK) to our waiting boat and lunch.
Tonight we are off by coach again to Namedy Castle for dinner with Princess Heide von Hohenzollern in the town of Andernach.
The dinner was beautiful, and the castle enchanting and Princess Heide a gracious hostess. Between entrée and main course we had a piano recital by a young Chinese girl, apparently Princess Heide and APT are helping to sponsor young emerging talent. This is the first year that Princess Heide has opened her home to tourists, the upkeep on such a magnificent castle would be enormous. The dinning area was huge, with enough white table cloth seating for all 144 passengers from our boat MS Amandte, it probably would have been the ball room in times gone by.
So home to bed absolutely full to the brim with delectable food and fine wine and happily tired after another beautiful day.
Chat again soon.
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