Originally Posted by Tanya934

We stayed @ The Jolly Hotel, which is in the media park, in October which was about a 15 min walk from the HBF (train station). The underground station @ Cristophestrabe is about 5 mins away but it can work out quicker to walk it to the Dom as you have to change lines.
Another thing to do is to get yourself a Cologne welcome card which will give you discounts on museums & attractions, as well as certain shops & restaurants. It also gives you unlimited use of their public transport system an will take you as far as Bonn on the local trains.
They are valid for 24. 48 or 72 hours from the 1st time you use it & saves a lot of time messing around with change for the machines @ the station.
If Cologne is full or too pricey you could look at Bonn which is about 30 mins by local train from Cologne & is also really pretty.
We tended to eat in the train station cafes @ night as a lot of the restaurants were too smokey to taste the food properly.