Our first stop was the Lindt chocolate factory! This place is amazing! We weren't allowed inside the actual factory (might frighten the oompa-loompas), but there's a great outlet store where you can buy TONS of chocolate for pennies. Kyle walked out with about 3KG (6.61lbs) of lovely Swiss chocolate for less than $20.
Next we took a nice walking tour of Aachen. Aachen is famous for it's sulfur springs and there are natural fountains all over the city. (The sulfur spring tasted like warm, runny eggs.)
It's not a lamp-post, but this reminds me of Lucy Pevensie.
This coach house was a bookshop in the 18th century, but the bookseller couldn't read or write! He didn't stay in business long and died a barrel-maker.
The Aachen Cathedral, and the only square in Aachen that actually has four sides! Every other open area is a triangle. This is because when the Romans laid the streets of Aachen they oriented them along their major highway, which runs south-west to north-east. However, cathedrals are all built facing north-south, so when Charlemagne rebuilt the roads to correspond with the cathedral, all the squares were bisected.
The cathedral is amazing! It's one of the first twelve sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List and was the coronation church for the German kings for about 600 years. The central part is the oldest: an octagonal tower with a 16-angled dome built by Charlemagne in 786. He's buried there today. The glass choir hall on the left was added when the central chapel couldn't hold all the pilgrims, and the tower on the right-side was added some time after that.
I just loved this garden on the roof. Downtown Aachen is packed with these beautiful European houses.
There was a huge festival that night back in Jülich in the Brückenkopf park, an old Napoleonic fort just over the Rur river.
These hot air balloons drifted past my apartment window while I was getting ready for the party.
Elvis lives! And he has a German accent! And can't dance for peanuts! I laughed so hard I almost fell over. Just when I didn't think they could top that, the band started playing "Sweet home Alabama". It is a physical impossibility for a German to say "Alabama". He is guaranteed to say "Ala-bauma".
There was an AMAZING fireworks show, the best I've ever seen. The fireworks were synchronized to music from Hook and Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie, the only good one), and you were allowed to get very close to the launchers.
After the fireworks, an Indian tribe did a dance. I had to come all the way to Germany to see native Americans?!?
This guy was waiting for me back in my apartment. That's a 1-Euro coin, about the size of an American quarter-dollar. Can somebody tell me what it is?
1 comment:
Oh man, that spider is sick! I would say its on par with hissing roaches.
I liked the explanation of triangular squares - that may explain why cities in Europe have the craziest layouts.
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