Lazy weekend

This weekend a few of us decided to just stay in the area and reeellaaaxxxxx. I wanted to not waste the 5th country we paid for on the Eurail pass though so Michelle, Katherine, and I went to Strasbourg, France! (all the trains to Paris were booked….) The train wasn’t too long and we got there around 8, then left around 8 so it was a decent amount of time. We realized when we got there that there was some sort of market going on in the city center, so all the shops were closed and the vendors were set up in tents lining all the streets! That took some time to just browse the stands of the cheap offers. We then found a café and got keesh and I got an éclair (one of my favorite pastries!) We picked up a pamphlet of tourist information at the train station and found that there was a wine cellar from the 1300 underneath a hospital! So, of course, our craving to visit hospitals wasn't fulfilled so we went to check it out. It was honestly really cool to walk through the underground caves and to see the giant old barrels of wine! There was information about how the doctors used to use the wine and alcohol for many different medicinal purposes like pain killing and sterilization.

What we really wanted to do was a boat tour of the town (as usual, when going to a new city we do a tour…) and the one on the boat seemed really cool! There were headsets for all the different languages and I kept changing mine between English and the English that’s suppose to entertain kids, so I learned about some buildings from a pirate and his pet parrot ;) The history of the town was pretty interesting considering its also the seat of the European Parliament. We also saw a part of town called “La Petite France” that had really cute houses and nice bakeries. We chose one that extended over Rhine River and had a really great dinner before heading back to Bonn.


After a great day in France we then met up with Alexis and had another relaxing day trip to Cologne. We when we got there we sought out the restaurant that was built into the famous 4 pastel houses and I finally had fish and chips! I have yet to try eis caffe though “coffee with ice cream” because when I asked for it I got an iced tea…. Which was pretty good too though haha. We then wanted to go to the Chocolate Museum. Around the museum there was an African culture festival going on with a lot of awesome shops and a concert of people playing bongos! I resisted buying my mom anything although her entire living room is decorated with African animals…. Next to the Chocolate Museum was the Cologne Deutschland Olympics and Sports museum (how appropriate for the time of year) and went in to look around and then watch some of the cannoning and skeet shooting that was live on the tv. NOW it was time to go to the chocolate museum but unfortunately it was not like the cheesecake factory in which they serve things other than dessert… this place was all chocolate, all the time (thus dinner was eaten in the train station on the ride back). But the Museum was so well set up and it was great to see how the machines work to make chocolate and then some of the culture (of the cocoa bean) and history of the original chocolate makers. I had actually seen the Houston Natural Science museum exhibit on chocolate when it came to town so it was nice to just walk through and see everything.

Well, that was my relaxing weekend and I’m glad to have and time to just chill. I’ll probably still want a massage when I get back to the States though like Alexis had on Saturday…. We’ll see!
Tschuss!