Our boat tied up inside Cologne’s city limits.
“Cologne is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and over 3.1 million people in the urban region. Centered on the left (west) bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about 35 km (22 mi) southeast of NRW’s state capital Düsseldorf and 25 km (16 mi) northwest of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany.
The city’s medieval Catholic Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is the third-tallest church and tallest cathedral in the world. It was constructed to house the Shrine of the Three Kings and is a globally recognized landmark and one of the most visited sights and pilgrimage destinations in Europe. The cityscape is further shaped by the Twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne, and Cologne is famous for Eau de Cologne, that has been produced in the city since 1709, and “cologne” has since come to be a generic term.”
Our activity of the day was biking. The bikes were marginal ebikes with small wheels. The route of the tour was a bit odd. Cologne is just a massive American style city. Our leader engineered a loop, which seldom seemed to take advantage of off-road bike paths. Maybe there weren’t any. We moved from roads to parks to abrupt turns in alleys. We crossed busy streets. There were few decent sights to see. At one point we crossed the Rhine on an extremely high, very busy bridge, very narrow sidewalk. Harrowing. This city is my #1 on places not to go back to.
The Cologne Cathedral is so massive it’s hard to be near it and take a meaningful photo. We thought the cathedral in Strasbourg was large. This one is much, much bigger. The surrounding square was very crowded, no surprise.
There’s just a few pictures of the Love Lock Bridge. This is what it is:
“The custom to attach padlocks to the Cologne Love Lock Bridge – or Love Bridge, for short – began in the late summer of 2008. Since then, the number of locks has increased momentously. In 2011, 40,000 padlocks were counted, but today the number is likely to be 8 times higher.
The bridge consists of 340 railing sections, which are similar to chain link fences and thus, provide an ideal space to attach padlocks. Each section has between 800 and 1,200 love-locks attached to it. Therefore, a good estimate might be 340,000 padlocks in total.
Along the southern footpath, free spaces can only be found in the last third of the bridge opposite the Cologne Cathedral. However, the northern footpath still offers lots of space for eternal love.”
Click here for photos