Erftstadt

This morning I was busy trying to interpret the email that I received in French about our cancelled train trip. I was quite impressed with my school girl French to realise it was important and then used google translate to work out what needed to be done for our refund. Managed to find the form to complete in English and when the confirmation email arrived I realised it was in French German and English. So I looked back on the initial email and that was also in 3 languages, I just needed to scroll down, duh!

Also found out that I can call people on our SIM card as wanted to confirm the bike tour that I booked last night. It was all on, and we walked there arriving a bit early so Trish had her coffee at a cafe and I was asked not to eat my pastry there that I had bought on the way.

The bike tour was brilliant. There were only 4 other people on the tour plus the guide and a guy training to be a guide. We were all pretty competent (really surprised Trisha that she was placed in that camp), so we did some extra things and some slightly trickier parts like very narrow alleyways, and steep downhills. There was only one really hard hill that we both managed to get up. Haven’t ridden a non e-bike for a while, where was the extra assistance!

So we rode all over the place, stopping to get info about the sights, walked up to a rose garden, stopped and had a snack, and were finished about 3.5 hours later.

We walked back to the river Rhine and picked up some bread rolls, cheese tomatoes and salami for a picnic lunch and ate that by the fountain, and I soaked my feet in the nice cool water. Then off to the cathedral which was pretty spectacular inside. They took the windows out in WW2 so they weren’t damaged and there was only a small part that was bombed - a lot of the rest of the city was decimated and has been rebuilt.

We knew we wanted to go to the chocolate factory which was a 1.4km walk. It was so very hot that we took the little city bus there instead. Inside the factory there was lots of exhibits, free chocolate and explanation of how chocolate was made including actual machines doing it. But, it was very hot in there as well. We didn’t buy any chocolate as it would have melted very quickly and we don’t have a fridge in our room.

So back on the wee bus which took a while to get back to the cathedral which is close to our hotel. We had a rather short lie down and decided we didn’t have many more steps in us so we had dinner at the bottom of the hotel that we are in. Couldn’t be bothered walking a block to get a gelato either! Might be because Trish has a rather large beer and I had a limoncello spritzer.

So let’s talk about the weather. I knew there had been a heat wave and was expecting it to be cooler. Sarah our bike guide said that it was really cold here last week and she had to lend warm clothes to people doing the tours. I have just received a heat wave warning from the UK government as it is going to get hotter. Paris seems to be hotter than here and is forecasted to be 35 when we arrive on Sunday. But then 23 the next day, we might feel the chill then lol. Trish and I have known each other for a long time and it’s good that we feel comfortable with just wearing a bra and undies in our rooms because it is just too hot for anything else. The bonus is that our washing dries really quickly every day.

18,761 steps and 30 degreesRead more