Day 3 (June 7th)

We slept late until 11:00 AM and had breakfast in (cereal for me and a cheese sandwich for Al). W put our walking shoes on and went to the main train station (Hauptbonhauf) to look into some weekend trips. We were thinking about going to Amsterdam this weekend but the tickets were over 200 Euros for 2nd class tickets. They had a special for the next weekend for 104 Euros on 1st class to Amsterdam so we got them. We also looked into getting tickets to Berlin but there was a late return train and we decided that we would rather drive. The we decided to walk to a park a few miles south of the train station. We got a little lost but ended up there. At first we were in a cemetery (actually very nice) but saw that the park was connected to the cemetery (a little strange). On the map it actually showed little "crosses" on the park to distinguish the cemetery. When we finally made it to the park section we got an ice cream cone and saw a little animal petting zoo. They had goats, sheep, ducks and a big schwein (pig). We hung over there for a while then walked around the park. We came upon an interesting area that had little "cottages" with beautiful gardens. We didn't know if they were permanent or vacation homes. We meandered through the rest of the park and finally came out after walking for a long time. We then walked over to the Rheinturn (tall building) area and ate dinner at an Italian restaurant. The waiter didn't speak English so again we "winged" it and ordered something safe. I had a nice black pasta with shrimp in a creamy spicy sauce and a couple of beers (called Deisel; pretty good) and a bruschetta. Al had the risotto and a Chardonnay. We were both exhausted after dinnner so we headed back to the apartment after a long day. At the apartment, Al did some research on spa's and I flipped thru the tv channels and fell asleep. Another tough night of sleeping (noise and heat).