Saturday, May 14, 2005

Alone in Duesseldorf

Lance is in Iceland right now, so I thought I would take a trip on my own. I hopped on a train this morning and went to Düsseldorf. It’s only an hour away and a cheap fare.

I didn’t have anything particular in mind to do once I got there, so I just wandered around. I had a little map that they gave me at the tourist office. I normally can’t follow maps, but this one was fairly easy to follow and I found my way around pretty easily.

I meandered down the Königsallee, which is the big shopping street (I guess you could say that it’s Düsseldorf’s answer to the Champs-Elysées in Paris). From there, I went to the Rhine, and then met up with the Hofgarten, which is a gigantic park – where a great number of the city’s museums are located. I spent most of my day walking around the area of the Hofgarten. It’s a beautiful park.

The last place I visited before leaving was an art museum that housed some Picasso, Dali, Kandinsky, Magritte, and others. I poked around in a beautiful little church on my way back to the train station.

Düsseldorf is a very modern city. There are very few old buildings left because it was bombed in WWII. As much as I love Europe for its history and centuries-old architecture (especially Gothic), I did find a lot of beautiful things there, especially the sculptures.

I’ll leave it at that.

Photos Here