Charlemagne's Aachen

Aachen is a German City in the centre of the action, near Belgium, near France and very near the Netherlands. In fact we were in the Netherlands long enough to eat our afternoon tea on the bus (37 minutes).
Aachen is a University town now, and is also a popular town for conferences and, this weekend, the World Equestrian Festival, the biggest horse jumping show in central Europe. The biggest employer here in the 1900's was a needle factory. Historically it was a Roman Bath town as it had hot springs here.
Charlemagne was King of the Franks and the Holy Roman Emperor. The Cathedral here was first built in 800 AD, he died in 814 and his tomb is here. 30 Kings and 12 Queens were anointed, crowned, and enthroned here in this Cathedral during the middle ages. So the Aachen Cathedral (The Church of Charlemagne) is very fancy.

This afternoon Jana a friend of Daniel's from Berlin, who is a local here, gave us a tour of the old town. It was great as we got all of the local history, favorite restaurants, pubs, bakeries and pizzerias. After the tour we all went for a drink in the oldest pub in Aachen (where Janas parents met and where her sister had her wedding reception) then we went for a pizza. We had a local craft beer from Bahkauv Brew, named after a beast that is rumored to live in the Aachen sewers.
The town is super busy as tonight Germany is playing Switzerland in the football UEFA football championship knockout round.Read more