Dusseldorf - Shady Location

Wednesday, the 17th of May, we checked out of the Continental, where to our surprise, our rate was discounted an additional 5 Eur because we didn't have breakfast, and then walked over to the post office where we packaged up some of our things to ship home. The lady there was amazingly helpful and all smiles. Could this really be happening...in a post office?!?! This really has been our experience everywhere in Germany. We cannot say enough, how fantastic this country has been to us, and how friendly almost everyone we've encountered has been. With our goodies on the way through the Deutsche Post, we checked our Eurail schedule for the next train to Dusseldorf, and found we had about 45 minutes to spare, which was plenty of time for us to enjoy a very tasty gigantic chocolate croissant, a perfectly toasted fresh whole grain bagel with cream cheese and lox, and two delicious double cappucinos in enormous thick glass tumblers. Full, we made our way next door to the train station and waited for the train to arrive. Again, the train was late. This is a very surprising phenomenon, as we were expecting german trains to always be on time, when in fact, just the opposite has been true. The trains in Italy were much more on time then here in Germany. Of course, in Switzerland, they were quite prompt. Apparently, the tardiness of trains in Germany is one of the many difficulties that have arisen as a result of the East/West integration. Anyway, once on board, I blogged, read my book, and Vee continued to devour her book too. After our arrival in Dusseldorf, we bought a map, and made our way to the hotel, which was right next to and right across the street from a myriad of sex shops. Yay. Needless to say, we were feeling a hair apprehensive about the nature of our accomodations. To our relief, the hotel turned out to be fine, and the lady at the front desk was quite pleasant and very helpful, giving us another map, and outlining for us all the important places for us to visit in Dusseldorf. We unloaded our stuff and went out for the rest of the day to discover what Dusseldorf was all about. We explored the old part of the city ("altstadt"), and the "Koe" (for "Koenig Strasse", or King Street) which is a wide, tree lined avenue line with very high end retail and restaurants and offstreet malls, and known to be one of the most expensive streets in all Europe. We went inside one of the malls, which we typically abhor, but I was curious to see it as the architecture and layout looked real interesting. And it was, but to me, it was really just another mall, with high end retail in which I have no interest. We found a little chinese-thai noodle house restaurant and had a late lunch slash early dinner that we both thoroughly enjoyed. The beer in Dussldorf is "Alt", while in Koln, the beer is "Kolsch", and there are always pilseners and weizenbieren. I learned from Vee's friend Sandra, that when ordering a weizen, you must specify whether you want a helles, a crystal or a dunkel; all very good and helpful information. So I had two Frankenheimer alts with my meal. I have only had a few alts in my life, since the very first beer I ever brewed myself was an alt, and it was attrocious. But this one wasn't bad. I enjoyed it, but as much as all the other types I've grown accustomed to ordering here. After our meal, we continued our walk along the Rhein, and walked to a new part of the city that had all kinds of really fun modern architecture, of which we took a slew of pictures. It was fun to watch a group of people rowing a skiff along the river, and walking up for close up views of the funky buildings lining the water. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for a super-yummy ice cream cone, and then took an indirect route through a wonderful little park with a pond and playful ducks and ducklings, and finally ended up at a little grocery just before closing time where we got a few goodies for the rest of the night and the next day. For the rest of the night, we took advantage of the very rare free wireless internet to catch up with some things, and continued to read our books. But, the highlight of our very late evening was watching "The Bourne Supremecy" DVD that we bought at a huge electronics store in Koln...the first movie we've watched since "Volver" in Barcelona, and the ONLY one in English since early February. WOW!!! What a treat!