We began with another very good breakfast but we also discovered we had disconnected the mini bar fridge yesterday and there had been a small flood. Oops. We hadn't even realised there was a minibar, but on reflection we should have checked what we were disconnecting.

Then we walked down to the Dom and picked up a 'Hop on Hop off’ bus ticket for 2 days with a 1 hour cruise included . We did a full loop and discovered amongst other things that that there are over 200 churches in Cologne, that 7 bridges cross the Rhine, that over 1200 trains a day go into the main station and houses are narrow because the tax used to be based on house width.

However the part that really hit home was the Roman history in the city. We had never registered that the empire went this far. There are many ruins including a number near the Cathedral. There are also remnants of the city wall and gates and also many Romanesque churches, including the one near our hotel, St Gereon.

After one loop of the bus tour we stopped for coffee and cake then walked to the 4711 (Eau de Cologne) building on its original site at 4711 Glockengasse. We were reminded that initially this was sold as a tonic and drunk. There is a fountain on site but we didn’t drink from it. There is also a great tapestry showing a soldier putting the street number onto the house – during the French occupation in 1796 all buildings were numbered for the first time anywhere . The tapestry has 4.6 million stitches and took 12 women 18 months to embroider. Chris left with a couple of items but of a newer fragrance, ‘Extase Latin Fever’.

We then walked down to the Rhine for our cruise. We were a bit south of the area we went to yesterday and there were a lot of hotels, cafes and pubs, narrow streets and a perfume museum. It was pretty, rather touristy but not too expensive. In fact Cologne has been a surprisingly inexpensive city to visit.

The boat trip took us south past a chocolate museum and sports museum (on the list for tomorrow) a number of expensive apartment blocks (both new and in renovated old buildings) then back to the Cathedral area. The views from the rivers were great and the on board commentary (in German and English) were good.

We chatted on the boat to a couple from Atlanta who were in Brussels on holiday and had come through for the day by train. The boat served drinks and snacks and we were amazed by the service. John ordered an iced chocolate. They delivered it to him about 10 minutes later, collected the empty glass after about half an hour then asked for payment just before the boat docked. The boat holds 250 and was very busy with people moving about, so we have no idea how they kept track of all the orders.

We picked up another bus and crossed the river to go up the triangle tower . This is 100m high and has an express lift (4m/sec) to a 400m viewing platform – 5 euro for the 2 of us. On the glass they have a silhouette of the buildings of interest which made it very easy to recognise them. It was hazy so we could only just make out the towers of the football stadium but most buildings were closer and easy to spot. We had walked over with a Bavarian family from Nuremberg. Their teenage daughter spoke good English and acted as a translator for us.

We came back by the next bus. We had worked out there was a stop about 5 minutes from the hotel. The Bavarian family had left at the Zoo and most people seemed to be doing a full loop. Back to check emails and kill the odd mosquito – we found a couple on the ceiling although we had not been aware of them before this.

We then went to a local pub for tea. They provided an English menu and a non smoking area for us – and very generous servings. John had the turkey house specialty, Chris had scampi salad. We were served by a very nice waitress who had only a little English (but much better than our German) and again the total price was a pleasant surprise.

We then had a brief walk home – well back to the hotel – to sort photos etc.