Germany - Part 2

Our fourth day in Germany was spent in Aachen. Here, we visited The Couven Museum, an 18th century house. This house contained a pharmacy that sold chocolate as a tonic and a remedy for digestive disorders and depression - still a valid treatment today, we believe! There was also a tiled room which showcased a variety of decorative tiles from the era.

Yep - still fun





Imitating the men on the tiles



After The Couven Museum, we went exploring and discovered a chocolate shop which sold the most delicious hot chocolates. The wait staff would bring you a cup of hot milk while you selected a chocolate-on-a-spoon from their huge selection of flavours. You would then stir it into the milk until it had melted. We tried hazelnut, chilli-orange, pear&cinnamin and caramel&vanilla bourbon.



Mmmm... how much of this will fit in our packs? Or even last the trip home?

We then went to the highly anticipated Coralus Thermen, which even the taxi driver recommended to us. Here, we luxuriated for an unmeasured length of time in the warm spas and whirlpools. We decided to find out what other facilities were available in the centre and went to explore upstairs. Here, we booked in for massages and facials. We decided to avoid the saunas as the rule in Germany is that you must be completely naked in these mixed saunas. Anything else would be unhygienic!!

The following day, we left Aachen for the final leg of our journey into Dusseldorf, only to discover that it had been snowing!! We were getting fairly tired by now but thought that the one hour walking tour of the city (in the freezing cold) would not take too much out of us. Wrong! Apparently it only took one hour if you didn't stop at any point. I'm not sure how long it took us, but it felt like an eternity. Upon returning to the hotel, we immediately got ourselves some robes, slippers and towels and headed into the basement swimming pool, after which we thought we would investigate the sauna, after all, there was hardly anyone else around. When we got to the sauna, there was no-one in there, so we entered with our swimmers on. Little did we know how embarrassing this situation was about to become. Soon, a naked girl entered, followed by her naked boyfriend. Now this was a very small sauna with only room for 4 people, so it was very cosy indeed. Sally and I made embarrassed chit-chat with eachother for about 30 seconds about how we probably needed to get going soon or we would be late (for what??!!) and then evacuated the sauna with haste. We sincerely hoped that this would be the end of the episode, but nay. That evening, we thought we would go out for dinner at a Thai restaurant that we had discovered earlier in the day. We hopped into the lift and about halfway down, who should hop in but our naked friends (barely recognisable with clothes on). Another very awkward 30 seconds passed before we could make our speedy escape.



German snow

We had one final morning left in Germany, so what else would we do but go to the Neanderthal Museum. This proved to be fascinating and we spent so much time there that we sadly had no time left to go to the Aquazoo. So disappointed but exhausted, we picked up our packs from the hotel and headed for the airport. Whilst we will look back on Germany with fond memories, we are glad to once again be in a country where English is the main language and where people drive on the correct side of the road.



Our new friend, Neanderthal Woman