Dan and Ellen, hiking and biking across the Atlantic: A layover day in Cologne

With rain in the forecast we took a day off the bike in Cologne. Lots to see here. The city has been around since Roman times, and there are a few remnants of that era around (more in some museums, but we didn't make it to every one). This is a section of the city gate from about 50 AD.

We started out at the Cathedral, which was started in 1248 but took 632 years to complete. The scale of the building is immense and hard to capture in photos. Even though Cologne was mostly leveled in the war, the basic structure of the Cathedral remained largely intact. Most of the stained glass windows were lost, but some were removed before the bombing and saved.

The Cathedral contains beautiful art, including a couple of amazing and beautiful altarpieces. The first (painted) one below is c. 1445; the second (carved) one is c. 1520.

Detail

After the Cathedral we walked to the Chocolate Museum, an amazing facility which explains the history of chocolate, it's role in various cultures and details of cacao farming (including what seemed a fair-minded discussion of farmer exploitation). The museum also contains a scaled down but exposed and functioning factory which allows observation of all the steps from roasting and processing the seeds through milling, mixing and eventually forming and packaging chocolate bars. Fascinating!