Day 15 (June 19th): My 40th Birthday

Woke up and went to our usual place for breakfast. Walked Al to work and headed back to the apartment. It was very nice out so I hung out in the backyard and wrote some emails. I met Al for lunch and we went to the Space Burger restaurant. They have all these weird toppings you can get on either a chicken sandwich or hamburger. I had a teriyaki burger which had teriyaki sauce, bean sprouts, lettuce and some other type mayo sauce along with a Becks beer. Al had the Mexican chicken sandwich with a slightly spicy sauce, lettuce and avocado. Solid sandwiches. I walked Al back to the office and I went off exploring with my camera. I brought my camera to take pictures of some of the cool buildings and of people on bicycles. I got into the bicycle thing while I was in Amsterdam. I found a park bench to set up shop which was a good vantage point for bikers to go by with the Rhine in the background. I took a bunch of pictures waiting for interesting people on basic bikes (similar to the ones in Amsterdam; a frame and two wheels). I hung out there for a while until a bunch of old people squeezed me out of my position. I grabbed another park bench on the Rhine and updated my journal. The sun was beating down and it was hot out. I actually had to shift benches to get in the shade. After working up a sweat I walked around the Alstadt and made my way home. Since it was my birthday Al had made reservations at a special place called the Rheinturn. This is the tallest building (the elevator goes up 176 meters) in Dusseldorf and you get spectacular 360 views up at the top. As you sit at the dinner table the view rotates and you get to see everything. It does a full rotation about every one hour. I had Al's shrimp appetizer and a white fish with a Konig Pilsner beer for dinner. It was an extremely clear night and you could see for miles. The timing was perfect and we got the sunset right in front of us. It was a nice experience. After dinner we went to the elevator to go down to the observation deck. There was an attendant in the elevator who was the old German guy. I decided to press the button for the observation deck since I had no way to communicate that to the old guy and he freaked on me because I touched "his buttons". We did a 360 walk around the observation floor but it wasn't' as good as where we had just come from. We finished up and left the Rheinturn. We walked past the Roncalli Apollo theater and asked a guy their what the deal was with this place. He explained that it was a variety show similar to the Cirque du Soleil. We thought it might be a good place to go with the kids. We continued walking down the promenade and saw some fireworks in the distance. After walking for awhile we headed back to the room. It was a wonderful day and a great birthday.