Hitting the Museums

The Mosaic Floor, ca 300 AD
see all photos »

We are skipping our travel blog for 7/28, due to technical difficulties (of which there have been many!)...we'll come back to it later if we are able to.

Sunday we were supposed to visit The Eifel, but we were rained out so we decided to take the kids into Cologne to hit the museums.  The first museum we visited was the Roman Museum, which was terribly interesting for us and mildly interesting for the kids.  The museum is next to the cathedral.  Turns out they were excavating there for a bomb shelter in 1941 and came upon a fabulous mosaic dating back to the Roman period in Cologne, approximately 300 AD.  Other mosiacs were then excavated from this same area and are included in the museum.  The museum holds an unbelieveable amount of stunning artifacts dating mostly from the first to the fifth century AD, although we also viewed some dating back approximately 7,500 years which were found in Lindenthal, the area where Kurt's family is from.

A gravestone/memorial (to himself) of a deceased Roman soldier (erected with part of his 13 years severance pay upon retirement)
see all photos »

We then took the Shoko (Chocolate) Express, a small street train, to the Chocolate Museum, which is located directly on the Rhine.  In addition to learning all about the process of growing, cultivating, and processing the cocoa beans, we were able to view the production process of Lindt chocolate bars and truffles from start to finish.  The kids were given wafers dipped in the huge chocolate fountain and thought they had died and gone to heaven!

Food of the Day:  Jaegerschnitzel (pork cutlet with mushrooms and gravy), and of course, smooth and creamy Lindt chocolate.