Part 2 – High speeding through Western Europe, visiting Cologne and Brussels
The short LX flight was an easy breeze, Paris will have to wait as I planned a 3 day trip first to Cologne, Brussels and finally Paris. Landing into rainy Paris but thankfully I’ll be dried since my trip is all under cover to Cologne, Germany this afternoon.
Getting out of CDG T1 took about 5 mins since it was such a maze, more on that later in the TR
As Canadians, it will always be a love/hate things all things French, that being said, why would someone designed a ticket machine that doesn’t accept bills. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for most people to use a 10 Euro bill for a 9.10 Euro fare to Paris Gare Du Nord?
The RER B train took approx.. 1 hr going through some rather shady parts of Paris, didn’t take me too long to figure out how to get from the underground to above rail lines at Gare du Nord. Ah France, you have all these shady immigrant ladies selling train tickets. Again using my broken French and English, bought a 2nd class ticket to Cologne, not the cheapest ride I’m afraid, but better to pay a premium in case the flights run late rather than buying a whole new ticket.
You know you’re spoiled when you haven’t sat in a coach seat (2 hrs +) for over 2 years, unfortunately, I caught a rather full train as a Friday mid-day train. Seat assignment was a window with dual seats facing each other. All squeeze in, thank god for jet lag! Zzz……..
1 1/4 hours into Brussels, the person next to me left, yippee, some elbow room for 5 mins lol. The Thalys train continuing to Lille and Cologne was still packed, had a mid-20s girl sit next to me for the rest of the trip to Cologne. Zzz…….., somehow we ended up using each other shoulders for over 45 min. The train finally started to empty out at Lille.
And about 3pm, finally in Cologne, Germany, with some Hyatt points, I did 1 night redeeming it here.
Hyatt Regency Cologne
Like any other North America to Europe trip, I always seems to be dead by late afternoon, went to Concierge to have the Brussels and Paris train ticket set up for tomorrow and then off to bed
Woke up around 3am, and started planning out the rest of the day, the walk between the hotel to across the Rhine River to the train station and Cathedral took about 7 mins. I guess a Burger King back at the Hauptbahnhof would suffice at 5:30am in the morning.
Since it was just about the time when the Cathedral opened up (6am), I waited a couple of minutes.
Cologne Cathedral
It sure was great to have a more authentic experience than having all the tourists around during the day, just something completely different.
After that, went back to the hotel room to rest and clean up then down for some club breakfast.
Finally before taking the 11:45 ICE train back to Bruxelles-Midi, I did the Cologne Cathedral climb.
It personally take myself 30 mins to go up and down and that’s if you are rather speedy, it took me about two 30 sec breaks to get to the top. I’ll advise to the climb as early as you can, I had a lot of traffic on the way down the climb as loads of elementary school kids showed.
Oh well, its 11 o’clock, time to run back to the hotel, grab my stuff and go, last look at Cologne
Part 2 Continues Below