Cologne, Germany

This past Wednesday we began our first trip since moving here. We decided to go to the Christmas Markets in Cologne (Koln), Germany. Our trip started a bit rocky when we missed our train by 5 minutes, but the 2 hour wait in the train station went surprisingly quickly. We ate lunch and watched the trains and the many people. The way there and the way back we were able to sit in the family section for our 2 1/2 hour train ride. Very helpful with an active 2 year old and squirmy now 7 month old!

We arrived at about 3:00 and made our way through the drizzle to our hotel. ( We are now reaping the benefits of all the travel Matt has done in the past and were able to use his Hilton points for our stay!)

There are 7 Christmas Markets all with a slightly different theme. On Wednesday we went to the market at the Cathedral ( the Cathedral is absolutely stunning and I will write more about that later.) This market was probably the busiest. It was voted the most beautiful in Europe and had 160 different pavilions.

One of the biggest draws at the markets is the Gluhwein. It is a very tasty hot wine and each market has a collector cup. When buying the wine you pay a deposit for the cup and you can either trade it back in when you are finished or keep the cup.

On Thursday we went to 3 markets. The first was the Medieval Christmas Market which was nice but we were expecting it to be more Medieval if that makes sense. It wasn't that busy so it was nice that Kaylin could walk around There was a donkey there which took some persuading to get Kaylin away from it. Nice, but not our favorite.

Next we went to the largest floating market on the "MS Wappen von Koln" it had about 4o stalls with more antiques than anything else.

Our final stop for the day was our favorite, "Old Town Home of the Heinzelmannchen". It was beautiful. Each pavilion reminded me of a log cabin and the smells of wood chips and food was so good. There was also an ice skating rink and a Ferris wheel. It just had a really nice feel to it.

On Friday we went to two markets and went back to the one at the Cathedral. The last market was only open from 4-9 and being Friday they were starting to get very busy as the day went on so we decided to skip it. By 6:00 that night walking through the market with a stroller was a nightmare...think of Summerfest on a Saturday night. BUSY and FRUSTRATING!

So, the first market of the day was the Market of Angels. This market came in at number 2 for us. Very nice had a carousal and 2 angels at the entrance where Kaylin and I had our picture taken and she went on the carousal and LOVED it!

The final market was the Farytale Christmas market based on the brothers' Grimm tales. There were 60 stalls and charactors from the farytales were mounted on top of some of the stalls. There was also a carousal there and we were really hoping Santa would be there or at any of the markets. We had been telling Kaylin for a while now that when we went to Germany we were going to find Santa and wish him a Merry Christmas and to tell him what she wanted for Christmas. We were certain that there HAD to be one there... wrong! Not a one. We did see a big statue of Santa that whe wished a Merry Christmas and she was pretty excited to see the Angels, but we still were disappointed she didn't see Santa. Every time we said we were going to Germany and each day there we were telling her we were going to find him and she was so cute when she would yell at the top of her lungs "Find Santa." Oh well, I think she still had a good time.

The kids were good, only a few minor melt downs and a lot of persuading with rides and treats! Trying to keep a two year old contained admist a large amount of people can be a challange! We hardly heard a peep out of Shane. He spent his time sleeping a looking around. Sleeping at night was a bit of a challange because everytime Shane woke up Kaylin woke up and vise versa.

Friday night we stopped to tour the Cathedral. Words really can not express how beautiful this Church is. The detail is absolutly amazing and the pictures we took don't do it justice at all. Construction of the Church began in 1248 and took, with interuptions over 600 years to complete. It is hard to even belive we were looking at relics that have been around for so long and to think of all the people that have walked on the same floor. If walls could talk.... It really took our breath away. We saw beautiful stained glass windows that were donated in the early 1500s, a sacrament alter from 1350, a chior stall from about 1308 with 104 seats- still the largest in Germany and many other pieces.

We really had a great time and definently now have the travel bug and are starting to figure out where our next trip will be. Matt has off the next two weeks so we plan on taking a few day trips.