Day 2 (June 6th)

Tough night sleeping because we had to leave the windows open to get some cool air into the room. Early in the morning we heard cars on the street and loud garbage trucks (recall.com trucks). We walked down the street and found a little cafe to have breakfast at which consisted on camambert cheese on a nutty roll with an orangina drink. I walked Al to her office and then went food shopping. I had no clue what anything was unless the picture on the product was pretty clear. I paid for everything but didn't realize then didn't give me bags for my groceries. I ended up paying for a brown paper bag (.25 euros). After dropping the groceries off, I walked south of the apartment and went to the Standehauspark. It was a nice park with a bunch of ducks walking around. I took some pictures here. There was also a museum nearby called the K21. I went inside to see that it was a contempary museum and that tonight was "free" night from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. This was for both K21 and K20 (Picasso exhibit). I continued south and then went to the RheinTurn which is a tall skinny observation building with a restaurant on top. I continued walking and went to the Medienhafen area which is a converted old wharf section with very interesting buildings some of them designed by Frank Gehry. There was one very interesting building with large plastic people with webbed hands and feet that were crawling up the building (see above picture). This area looked like an inlet off the Rhine river. There was also a park along side this area that was nice. I then followed this up to the promenade on the Rhine and stopped for lunch at the Gosch Syct restaurant. I had a cold shrimp in creme sause on a roll with a beer (Frankenheim Alt; very good). It was a beautiful day along the Rhine as I sat and ate lunch. The sun was out and there was a nice cool breeze as I watched the boats and people go by. The restaurant played good American music. I needed to use the restroom at the restaurant but it cost .30 euros. I only had .25 euros and the attendant took it. The mug I was drinking from was pretty nice and would go well with the collection at home. I asked the waiter if I could pay for the mug but he said "no, you can just take it". It was cracked so I took the ash tray instead. I finally motivated and got up and walked around the rest of the promenade. I asked about the boat rides from Dusseldorf to Cologne and they said it would take from 5-7 hours and I could drive there in 30 minutes. It was long day of walking from 10 AM to 6 PM. Al met me back at the apartment at 6:45 PM. Since it was the 1st Wednesday of the month it was free night at the K20 and K21 museums which were open late until 10:00 PM. We decided to go to the K20 since they were having a Picasso exhibit. The exhibit was good but it was Picasso's late years of art and very strange. We checked out the rest of the museum, but nothing spectatular. We then walked around the old town looking for a restaurant. There are 100's of restaurants and bars to choose from with huge numbers of people walking around. Alot of people were out tonight probably because tomorrow was a Catholic holiday and businesses were closed. We ended up going to a Tapa's restaurant expecting to have Tapas but since we didn't understand any of the items on the menu we ended up each picking an entree from the menu. I got a seafood platter with salmon, 2 big prawns and 2 white fish (I didn't know what they were). I asked for a beer and in the translation the waiter brought me two beers. One was a small one (.2 ml) of Gatz beer (ok amber beer) and the other one was a large beer (.5 ml) of Altstat which tasted strange (like lemonade and beer). I ended up finding out that they mix sprite with the beer. Neither beer was great but of course I drank them both. All through dinner we watched hundred's of people walk on the street (no cars allowed). There was a German soccer game on so that probably helped add to the choas in the streets. We aslo noticed groups of people all wearing the same shirt and/or wearing strange clothing, i.e. Bee antenae or a guy holding a ball and chain. We found out that they were bachelor(ette) parties. People from all over come to Dusseldorf to party (both young and old). Everybody drinks beer and it is legal to walk around with an open beer. We headed home after dinner