Breakfast is 8am-10am at weekends so it is a good reason for a slower start to our day. We left laundry at the reception and had the usual feast. There are a number of guide books in the breakfast room and C has been reading the Rick Stevens one - mainly because it is in English but also because the style suits our travel tastes.

Each day we have walked down to the Dom using different roads . One day we went past a coin shop – today we went around our local church. We went into a souvenir shop for postcards to find it was run by an Asian family – just amused us to go to Germany and get served by people from Asia for souvenirs!! We then moved on to the station to get our train tickets for tomorrow. The price was less than we had expected so we checked to find we had a special weekend rate. We had opted for the cheapest way as it is the scenic way along the Rhine. The station has a 'help desk' and the people at it were very good. We later used them to ask were we could buy stamps for some postcards we had bought.

We then used the second day of our bus tickets to get to the 2 museums we had decided on - not art or Roman history, but chocolate and sports. (We got lotsa culture eh?)

The chocolate museum is run by Lindz and was excellent. It had most displays in both German and English so we had all the information we could need . It also had a number of displays for children. It went through the growing and processing of the cocoa bean with lots of photos and push buttons to hear the person talk about their personal role. I was taken by the fact that 40-50 million people world wide are dependant on cocoa production. They had a piece about the commodity markets as well - high level economics for a chocolate factory but very clear.

We then moved on to the factory area. They had a number of machines on display but also a processing part. We saw liquid chocolate poured into moulds, cooled and the small bocks dropped onto a conveyer belt, automatically picked up in groups and placed in the wrapping area, a long strip of wrap was unwinding and out popped the wrapped blocks in a steady stream. They also showed how the hollow chocolates are made – the mould has a set amount of chocolate poured in, then it is rotated and the centrifugal force forces the chocolate away from the centre.

There were lots of historic tins, packets etc in the next area . Elaine would have loved it. They had displays on the history of chocolate drinking then the making of the blocks. There was a section with old chocolate cups and pots when it was definitely a classy drink. It was also considered to be an aphrodisiac Amongst the displays was the sensation of Christmas 1903, talking chocolate –a chocolate phonograph that could be played for 35 seconds and then eaten. The only part we couldn’t appreciate was the old chocolate TV ads (in Deutsche) but the locals were amused.

The only disappointment was the small number of free samples – but I already knew they were limited. We got one of the small blocks on arrival and then had the chance to eat wafers that had been dipped into runny chocolate. YUM……………. We snuck back for seconds. There was a chocolate café and chocolate shop – we had a quick look around but it was a warm day so we weren’t tempted to buy. We noted the beauty set and the beer bottle made of chocolate but didn’t check the prices . There was also some chocolate on sale in the museum and a part nearby where you could wrap it yourselves.

The building it is in is great. It uses an old building by the Rhine and there is a new part that looks like a ship. We saw it at its best from the cruise boat yesterday.

Then we used the 2 for 1 entry to the Olympic and Sports Museum. The main corridor is set out like a lane on a track with different sports in the side rooms. The displays included old gymnastics equipment and clothing (very sexy all-in-rompers!! ) momentos from famous sports people, a room with ‘goals of the year’ a race car, and our favourite, a locker room with outfits from prominent sports people set out. Seats in the various rooms were often the type used in the sport or the sports arenas. It was very hands on – you could bike in a wind tunnel, wrestle, and the whole roof top is a place for football, basketball etc. The café here had more healthy food than the café at the chocolate museum!!

We walked along the Rhine and had lunch at a place that seemed to specialise in asparagus . We both had asparagus soup with croutons of pork crackling – John had an almost chocolate-type beer and I had the nicest wine to date. Groups of guys were buying sausages and beer by the metre!! The beer comes in a trough with spaces for about 10 glasses. We have learned to just ask for an English menu – to date they have always had one. The busker who acts as a human fountain was there, as well as a couple of musicians. It was the sunniest day to date and Saturday, so the grass area had lots of people just sitting in the sun. Once again it is table service and then the waitress comes back to hr customers at the end to be paid. No paying in advance and no going to a counter here. The system relies a lot on honest customers.

On our way back to the hotel we did a couple of caches – one was easy as it was in the hands of other cachers who were filling it in, and the other was in a children’s park that was a former prison area and where a large number of people were killed by the Nazis . We happily blobbed out before doing a couple more caches (one at an art work of a flying car and the other at an historic site). We then went the long way to the pub we had been to the previous day. On the way we saw a beer mobile (a large cart with 3 guys on either side pedaling while drinking ale and having a great time) – as we took a photo one of the bikers took our photo!

The neighbourhood pub had 2 big tables of family groups, All the tables were set for 5 or more people . We suspect it had been rebuilt to look historic but there was certainly old furniture there. The waitress from yesterday recognised us and she monitored a new waitress who served us. Rye bread with what seemed to be fat on top was again complimentary. We then had salads first then mains with lots of spuds. John has spare ribs with chips and I had steak with a huge baked potato (ate half). It is hard to starve in Germany.