Date Day!

Eric and I had an official "Date Day". We try to squeeze one in every once in a while considering we're usually bogged down with work, or having to be disgruntled parents. SO, we make it a point to take some time for ourselves, venture off and relax for an afternoon and have some "us" time.

Our adventure for the day was Köln, Germany...which is almost two hours from us. We've driven past it before when we were on our way to Bavaria, but we didn't have time to really stop and check the place out considering we had a twelve-ish hour drive to deal with, lol. 

Luckily, the weather had cooled down considering it was hitting almost 100* with obnoxious humidity for a few days in a row. Since we had a four day weekend, we were wanting to venture over sooner, but the weather had made us become rather lethargic and unmotivated... I mean, honestly, who wants to walk all around cobblestone in ridiculous heat? Not I! SO, we held out till yesterday and it was a wonderful (and enjoyable) 74* verses a few days earlier when it was 101*. Woot!

On our way through the shopping area, I saw this and thought it was rather amusing.. call me immature or whatever, but it mage me giggle :)

I will admit, if I wanted to go on a massive shopping spree, Köln would definitely be the place to go. There were TONS of shops, H&M's, awesome purse boutiques...you name it, it's probably there. I was LOVING it, although in the back of my mind..I kept hearing "Don't blow your money. You're saving, remember!!". Boo!

We managed to find the Hard Rock Cafe and hung out there for some lunch. Since we've been in Europe, I've been to several different locations (London, Paris, Amsterdam ) and this one was kinda disappointing. I only say that because the staff wasn't all that friendly and the seating kinda sucked. We were seated in an area where alot of tables were smushed together so there wasn't really any room between one table and the next.. so if you really didn't know any better, you'd think we were a group that came in together verses being seperate customers. Ontop of that, I was miffed that the waitress used the credit that I had earned on my All Access card when I specifically told her NOT to use it. Sure, it may be silly to be grumpy about her using the points towards our meal, but when you convert what I had earned to Euros, it kinda killed whatever I had earned it made it look like peanuts considering I was trying to buy this:

It's a pretty awesome toggle bracelet with Fleur De Lis throughout the links. It isn't all that expensive, but the stuff I had earned would've knocked down the price on it.....grrrrr.....

From there, we made our way over to the Cathedral:

Eric infront of the Cathedral :)

This thing was absolutely breath taking! We must've spent atleast a half hour just outside looking at it and checking out all the different sculptures all over the base of the building!

Once inside, there was even more overwhelming architecture:

One of the side walkways

The main walkway to the alter

Truth be told, I was staring up so much that my neck was becoming rather sore. Every time I go into an old, historical Cathedral, I stay in there SO long to look at everything, all the sculptures, stained glass, carvings on the pews..everything.  I could only wish that there were places like this in the United States, but sadly, I havent run across anything *this* old or even this awesome..atleast nothing along these lines on the West Coast.

Here's some pretty spiffy information I was able to find on the place (from Wikipedia):

Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 and took, with interruptions, until 1880 to complete. The cathedral is one of the world's largest churches and the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. For four years, 1880-84, it was the tallest structure in the world, until the completion of the Washington Monument. It has the second-tallest church spires, only surpassed by the single spire of Ulm Minster, completed 10 years later in 1890. Because of its enormous twin spires, it also presents the largest façade of any church in the world. The choir of the cathedral, measured between the piers, also holds the distinction of having the largest height to width ratio of any Medieval church, largest façade of any church in the world. The choir of the cathedral, measured between the piers, also holds the distinction of having the largest height to width ratio of any Medieval church, exceeding even Beauvais Cathedral which has a slightly higher vault.

. Cologne's medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship of the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe."

"The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the "Shrine of the Three Kings", a large gilded sarcophagus dating from the 13th century, and the largest reliquary in the Western world. It is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose bones and 2,000-year-old clothes were discovered at the opening of the shrine in 1864."

The fact that we were able to see the "Shrine of the Three Kings" is...well..a once in a life time kinda thing. It was absolutely beautiful even though it was rather challenging to get a picture of it since it was surrounded by iron gates (Eric was tall enough to get through a gap to push my camera through).

One of the many large, gorgeous stained glass panels

"Altar of the Poor Clares, about 1350 / 1360. This is the oldest remaining sacrament altar with a permanently fixed tabernacle. This lavish winged altar can be opened in three different transformations. It originates from the former Franciscan convent of St. Clare in Cologne and it was brought into the cathedral in 1811."

All in all, I would HIGHLY reccommend to anyone who happens to be visiting Germany to take a break and hit this place up. You won't regret it!  You only have to pay 1 euro for a brochure that gives you all kinds of information on the Cathedral, you can even check out the churches treasure, although it's 12 euro and you're not allowed to take pictures (we didn't check it out since I would've been trigger happy the whole time).

To sum it up: Eric and I had a fabulous date day and TOTALLY loved Koln!