Last Pre-Baby Trip Day 6 (25 April, 2007)

^ Front of the Dom (Cathedral) in Köln at night ^

Slept until we could sleep no more and walked over to the Dom to see what was inside - the closest either of us had been before was the train station.

Although it was beautiful, there was almost nothing ornate inside. Nice stained glass, but nothing else really worth mentioning. Oh yeah - this is one BIG church!

After the Dom we dropped our cameras off at the hotel and continued walking up Hohe Strasse through the shopping district. We (Mark) wanted to visit a store called Globetrotter - the largest camping/outdoor store in Europe.

This store is awesome - it has everything you could possibly need. Unusual things in this store include a large indoor scuba diving tank and an on-site master dive instructor so you can bring your expedition to Cologne and work out any non-verbal signals and test all your equipment before you get it out in the ocean.

Globetrotter also has a rain room (for testing raingear) and a cold room for testing cold-weather gear. Laura and I were warm so we went into the cold room to see what it's like. It was just like -8 degrees celsius (roughly 13 degrees Farenheit). It also has a heat sensing camera which you can use to see which of your parts are getting cold first.

We found a couple of small things to pick up there, but ultimately left less than satisfied by any unusual trinkets and went off in search of a little snack and a store that sells strollers.

We found a stoller place after no small amount of searching (apparently department stores don't deal in strollers...you have to find a specialist) and spent roughly an hour asking every question we could think of in broken German, but we got the job done. The thing is, Europeans seem to put a lot more thought into the design of their strollers and we hadn't seen anything like them in the states.

We went back to the hotel to have a nap and then go track down a bar to watch the Liverpool game later that night.

We went walking down towards the river and just off the square called Heumarkt, we found a little pub called Taverna Flamenca which is run by an old Spanish gentleman. Dark, close, smoky and everything you'd think it would be, Flamenca was wonderful and at halftime one of the regular customers got out his guitar and played some renditions of songs by the Gipsy Kings and others. Liverpool lost, but it was still worth the effort for a wonderful atmosphere with what seemed to be nice, friendly people.

When we left the bar it was nearly 11:00 and we were hungry for a little something and that something ended up being the Brauerei Sion which was founded in 1310. We spent a little more time walking around the Dom and got a couple of night-time pictures before they turned the lights out.