Pick-A-Day

September 2016
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My September… Düsseldorf

Wow… This month is flying by, and things are, at least for now, going pretty well.

I skipped out of town last weekend – driven out of town by the prospect of being within drum earshot (and only drum earshot) of a “music” stage set up to motivate the runners of the Berlin Marathon.

My destination? Düsseldorf.

Flying with Eurowings (well, Germanwings), and a highish end city center hotel booked at a very reasonable rate, I spent less than 200€ on these two aspects of my journey.

As for what I did in Düsseldorf – I went to the Neanderthal Museum, which is basically 13 kilometers directly east of the city, and relatively easy to get to on the S-Bahn, assuming you don’t mind climbing up and down steep hills on foot.

Which I didn’t.

The museum is dedicated to Neanderthal Man – one of the first specimens was found near the museum back in 1856.

Unfortunately the museum was, at best, lackluster. I wish I could put my finger on what was wrong with it, but ultimately I don’t really feel like I learned anything, rather I got to wear a pair (well, three, given that the first two did not work) of headphones that I would plug into various jacks to listen to various bullshit.

Neanderthal Man watches TV

It took me about an hour, but then I returned the headphones and wandered the outdoor part, over to the site of the cave, headphone-less. I doubt I missed much.

Neanderthal Parking

What I can say is that last weekend the weather in Neanderthal Valley and in Düsseldorf was spectacularly nice. Perfect, actually. I could not have picked a better weekend to make my escape.

After I got bored, I returned back up the mountain to the S-Bahn station, where I waited for the next train to town, grabbed a bowl of authentic Japanese Ramen soup (Düsseldorf is famous for having Germany’s largest concentration of Japanese citizens), and found my hotel – where I promptly passed out.

Rheinturm & Stadttor

Mind you, I’d woken up at 0530 in order to catch my flight, so I think that passing out at 3:00 isn’t all that bad.

Rheinturm

After that, I wandered along the Rhine, watching people and watching the sunset. I took a lot of very nice photos of people, the Rhineturm, and the Stadttor. I even took some lovely pictures of the Rhineturm reflected on the Stadttor. Eventually I found a place for dinner, before passing out early after having read a few pages of a book.

Waling the Fence

Rhineturm

Sunday was, essentially, more wandering: down the Rhine, over a bridge, into a park-like area next to the Rhine, where I did some more reading, before heading back to the airport and my flight home.

Bridge over the Rhine

It was a perfect mini-break.

Something I need to do more often.

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