After a sweet night's sleep in our fancy hotel suite, we woke up to unlimited cups of cappuchinos :-). Definitely made my day. As with any other trip, we were pretty much planning as we were going along. Today we decided we will go to Aachen and then Belgium.
We made a pit stop en route to fill our hungry pits. Finding vegetarian food in this country, where people seem to eat only sausages for breakfast, lunch and dinner, is a little bit of a tall ask. We ended up at this local roadside restaurant/cafe thing where the owner didn't speak any English. Of course we tried using a few words from our German translations handbook but to no avail. Fortunately for us, one of the other customers spoke English and ordered our breakfast (Fried Eggs and bread) for us.
Beautiful Aachen
Back on track and with our tummies full, we sped along towards Aachen, one of the prettiest cities in Germany. The Aachen Altstadt, old town, is lined with huge gothic buildings, modern art fountains, old roman style streets etc. Aachen seems like a happy mix of Roman and Gothic Architecture. The Gothic city hall and the cathedral face off, forming a very buzzing and pretty square. Walking about the pretty Altstadt, we came across, what is very common in most european cities, various street performers. The pick of them was this classical band performing right outside the city hall.
The one factor that makes Aachen unique is the fact that the city is on
the border of three countries. One of the restaurants on the German border in Aachen pretty much has a door leading to Belgium, another to Netherlands and the final one to Germany. After walking around for a bit in this beautiful town, grabbing a hot chocolate and something quick to eat, we were on our way again to explore new worlds.
Boring Belgium
Driving into Belgium, our first stop was Brussels. To be honest, Brussels isn't the prettiest city we've been to. It seemed quite bland an
d devoid of character. In fact, the city reminded us quite a bit of Paris minus the coolness factor. We visited the Palace, the cathedral and town hall in Brussels. As you can see from the picture of the Brussels Cathedral, its very French in design. Kind of looks like the Notre Dame but relatively tiny and far less impressive. Unsatisfied with Brussels, we finally drove off towards Antwerp.
In Antwerp we visited the Grote Markt, Guildhouses and the Town hall in Antwerp. Antwerp seemed like a city that, given some time, would have impressed us quite a bit. However, as things would have it, we didn't do Antwerp justice by just driving through most of it.
Before heading back home though, we had to get a souvenir, or in this
case, eat a souvenir. We filled up nicely on REAL BELGIAN WAFFLES. Plotting our trip back to Dusseldorf, we realized we were actually driving through the Netherlands to get to Germany. Netherlands wasn't on our agenda since Anusha had another trip planned to Amsterdam with her cousin Anita later the same month. Our extent of The Netherlands experience was limited to waving at any Dutch folks and windmills we could see :-)
We made a pit stop en route to fill our hungry pits. Finding vegetarian food in this country, where people seem to eat only sausages for breakfast, lunch and dinner, is a little bit of a tall ask. We ended up at this local roadside restaurant/cafe thing where the owner didn't speak any English. Of course we tried using a few words from our German translations handbook but to no avail. Fortunately for us, one of the other customers spoke English and ordered our breakfast (Fried Eggs and bread) for us.
Beautiful Aachen
Back on track and with our tummies full, we sped along towards Aachen, one of the prettiest cities in Germany. The Aachen Altstadt, old town, is lined with huge gothic buildings, modern art fountains, old roman style streets etc. Aachen seems like a happy mix of Roman and Gothic Architecture. The Gothic city hall and the cathedral face off, forming a very buzzing and pretty square. Walking about the pretty Altstadt, we came across, what is very common in most european cities, various street performers. The pick of them was this classical band performing right outside the city hall.The one factor that makes Aachen unique is the fact that the city is on
the border of three countries. One of the restaurants on the German border in Aachen pretty much has a door leading to Belgium, another to Netherlands and the final one to Germany. After walking around for a bit in this beautiful town, grabbing a hot chocolate and something quick to eat, we were on our way again to explore new worlds.Boring Belgium
Driving into Belgium, our first stop was Brussels. To be honest, Brussels isn't the prettiest city we've been to. It seemed quite bland an
d devoid of character. In fact, the city reminded us quite a bit of Paris minus the coolness factor. We visited the Palace, the cathedral and town hall in Brussels. As you can see from the picture of the Brussels Cathedral, its very French in design. Kind of looks like the Notre Dame but relatively tiny and far less impressive. Unsatisfied with Brussels, we finally drove off towards Antwerp.In Antwerp we visited the Grote Markt, Guildhouses and the Town hall in Antwerp. Antwerp seemed like a city that, given some time, would have impressed us quite a bit. However, as things would have it, we didn't do Antwerp justice by just driving through most of it.
Before heading back home though, we had to get a souvenir, or in this
case, eat a souvenir. We filled up nicely on REAL BELGIAN WAFFLES. Plotting our trip back to Dusseldorf, we realized we were actually driving through the Netherlands to get to Germany. Netherlands wasn't on our agenda since Anusha had another trip planned to Amsterdam with her cousin Anita later the same month. Our extent of The Netherlands experience was limited to waving at any Dutch folks and windmills we could see :-)
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