Category: Miscellaneous

The Fair

August 30, 2015

Once again we visited the Duchess County Fair. It was great as usual, and here’s a list of ten things we saw:

1) Lots of rides! They were a little less dazzling after what we’d seen in Hamburg, but I still cursed my craven sense of balance that prevents me from riding them these days!

2) Prize winning wheat! Nearby were sunflowers about 10 feet tall!

3) Delicious fair food, absolutely worth the incredibly inflated prices! $9 for a cob of corn and some lemonade? No problem 😉

4) This amazing first-prize winner of the 7-10 year old ‘non kit’ Lego assembly contest. I kid you not, this was indeed the blue ribbon winner:

5) Some extremely sporty sheep!

6) A legion of Minions!

7) Fine, fine art:

8) Porky the giant pig! Enough sausage for 1000 people! Two 100 pound hams! (No we didn’t enter to see what was probably a sleeping pig)

9) A baby cow, born only minutes earlier:

10) And last but not least many animals for KLS to feed. She was scared of the camel because of his teeth, but he turned out to be a gentle (slobbering) fellow 🙂

Last Day

August 14, 2015

After a lovely breakfast, we left Wipperfeld mid-morning for the train to Frankfurt (via Köln):

It was speedy and very comfortable, and it only took a little over an hour to arrive. It was now early afternoon and since our return flight is very early there wasn’t much to do aside from preparing for our return.

We went into town for a bit of shopping but we were all very tired and it was an early night.

Tomorrow we’ll say goodbye to Germany and return home to the U.S.

We’ve seen a great deal of Germany these past two weeks, and it’s always been exciting or historic or funny or beautiful. Best of all was seeing dads homeland and meeting the family I’ve known about forever for the first time! This is a trip that will stay with me for the rest of my life 🙂

Köln

August 13, 2015

It’s the morning of the next day and we’re in Cologne. We arrived yesterday after a pleasant trip from Hamburg.

As soon as you exit the main station here you’re faced with this:

That’s the famous Köln Cathedral, which has stood for over 700 years and survived the bombs of WW2. I had to climb it!

There are some 533 steps, mostly in a (poorly ventilated) spiral staircase that looks like this:

It took me about 13 minutes to get to the top, but it was an extremely tiring climb since the steps are tall and since it was very warm in the staircase. It was certainly more difficult than The Eiffel Tower (which has more steps). Here’s me immediately after reaching the top:

Interior view of the tallest spire:

View of the city from the outside portion:

The viewing platforms actually look like a prison, I’m told due to suicides. There is graffiti everywhere as well. This is one major attraction that is not quite as pretty close up as the others we have visited:

After checking into our hotel (which doesn’t have air conditioning!) it was time for some brief shopping at the 4711 store, which actually has a fountain of the cologne you can dip your hand in!

And then K, J and I did a whirlwind tour of a Chocolate Museum…

Before we met three of my cousins (and their husbands) for dinner and drinks, which was great. Probably because of how tired I was I forgot to take photos so here’s another of the Dom as we headed back to our hotel near midnight:

Robot Claw