Dusseldorf; Monday, 03 May, 2010

It’s Monday, so Europe is closed! After a late breakfast an a leisurely check out I headed over to the station to drop off my luggage in the lockers before spending the day visiting some of Dusseldorf’s parks and gardens, as they were about the only things open on a Monday.

First stop, to the north of the city centre was the aptly named Nordpark. The park also houses the city’s aquarium, which was open, but I decided not to go in as it’s quite small and an unfeasibly large number of children were going in as I arrived so I thought it might be a little noisy and crowded inside!

Instead I had a long wander around the park. It’s divided up into a number of areas with a small formal lake surrounded by statues, then a large fountain and a some blocks of planting. At the back of the site is a small Japanese Garden.

Having looked around the Nordpark I hopped back onto the U-Bahn and then a tram over to Schloß Jägerhof and the start of the Hofgarten.

The Hofgarten runs through the centre of the city, with formal tree lined boulevards near the palace merging into formal gardens and then large open spaces before finally ending up in the Museum quarter the other side of the Oberkassel bridge.

By the time I got to the Oberkassel bridge there was about 30 minutes before I needed to start heading back so I wandered over the bridge to the other side and had a brief look around Oberkassel before hopping back on the U-Bahn, heading back to the station to pick up my luggage and then out to the airport.