Erlangen to Bonn to Köln

After a small sleep-in and a hangover-curing breakast in Erlangen we got in the Mercedes for the trip to Bonn. My brother's girlfriend is from Bonn, and this was the long-awaited trip to meet her family. After we arrived her father kindly gave us a tour around town, including a visit to the Sterntor or "star gate" pictured above.

It was a fantastic night spent in Bonn, with a warm welcome and family dinner, but altogether too brief a visit. After a breakfast that was as delicious as dinner the night before we said our good-byes and headed off to Köln, or Cologne in english.

The Kölner Dom, or Cologne Cathedral, is simply amazing. The generations of work that have gone into the European cathedrals continues to amaze me. This cathedral was under construction for over 600 years, and it's two enormous spires present the largest façade of any church in the world.

While I certainly don't feel the holy spirit, the cathedrals we've visited on this trip have really impressed me. They're an integral part of the history on this part of the world -- and are still at the physical center of many towns.

The low light makes for a challenging environment to get decent photos, and their sheer popularity makes it enough more difficult to get unique photos, but I tried to focus on the more extreme angles and the people to differentiate my shots from the rest.

We left Köln to head back down the Rhine River, however I couldn't resist swinging back via Bonn to get some photos of street art we had seen the day before. Bonn has a significant American district, with street names like Kennedyallee and Martin-Luther-King-Straße. Trippy.