Cologne and Koblenz - Part II

So I finally got to Cologne at 7am Sunday morning. I met up with Jingwen at the train station. She came in on an earlier train. We then proceeded to walk around the city, which was completely empty of people since it was so early on a Sunday. We didn't start to see a good amount of people until after noon.

We went to the famous Kölner Dom which is a huge church, very beautiful Catholic church. There's an alter inside that is supposed to contain the bones of the Three Wise Men. There was service since it was Sunday but they were only in a corner of the church. Did I mention this place is huge? All the windows had stain glass. They were really, really nice. I took a picture of one but it didn't come out very well.

The church is really tall as well as big. We couldn't get the whole church in a picture unless we were really far away. You can pay to climb up the 509 steps to the top and get an amazying view of the city. We did that in the afternoon and that's where the picture of the city came from.

After looking around in the church for a while, we walked around the city. The city has a pretty big shopping district. But again, it's Sunday so nothing's open. The city was pretty quiet since it was so early. We got bored so we went back to the train station to check on tickets to go to Koblenz.

Koblenz is about midway between Cologne and Frankfurt. Cologne being north of Frankfurt. All three cities are near or on the Rhine River. It's a smaller town but has a few historical sites and just a really nice, pleasant atmosphere. It takes about an hour to get there on the Regional trains so we left Cologne at around 9:30am. More on that part of the trip in Part III.