Cologne; Tuesday, 20 April, 2004

After checking out of the hotel and depositing my luggage in the scarily high-tech left luggage lockers at the Hauptbahnhof, I got the tram out to the Zoo to pick up the Rhine Cable Car.

The Cable Car crosses the Rhine and from my little car I got spectacular views across the city and the Rhine including back to the Cathedral in its full glory.

After the Cable Car I popped down to the south of the city and visited the Rautenstrauch-Joset Museum which has an interesting collection of Far and Near East artefacts, all displayed in German though so it really stretched my ability (to find the right words in the dictionary!)

From there I came back into the centre of the city and visited the Römisch-Germanisches Museum which has a massive collection of remains and artefacts that have been recovered shedding light on Cologne as a Roman city in the 1st Century.

After that I had a quick lunch and then headed over to the Kölnisches Stadtmusuem - the city museum - that the bus tour on Saturday had briefly stopped at.

The museum has an interesting collection of artefacts that tell the history and culture of Cologne including its famous February Carnival. The most moving display was the aerial photograph - that was taken of the city shortly after the end of the war showing a scene of total devastation with every building, except the Cathedral, a ruin and the bridges lying shattered in the Rhine - and fragments of some of the bombs that fell on the city.

By then the time had come to head back to the airport to get my flight back to the UK.