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MIKE AND JESS' TRAVEL DIARY

Netherlands and West Germany Trip

Day 6 - December 6 2023

We had a late start to the day, but Mike still had not slept well. Our easiest day trip from Dusseldorf was Aachen, an old town that originally was a Roman Settlement, later became the residence of Emperor Charlemagne. It ended up on our radar because it had another gorgeous cathedral and a few big Christmas markets. The train ride was about an hour and a half. We walked 15 minutes into town and saw the twinkle lights from a Christmas stall and the cathedral behind it.

After browsing the stalls at the first market, we decided to pop into the cathedral. The intricate tile mosaics and stained glass windows were pretty incredible.

It was time for food. Since we are not sick of wursts yet, we got currywurst with fries and a brat with sauerkraut.

At each Christmas market, the gluhwein stalls all serve it in a decorated mug. The mug is usually themed after the Christmas market and they change each year. When you order the gluhwein, you pay about 4 Euro for the drink and about 3-4 Euro for a deposit for the mug. When you are done with the wine and don’t want to keep the mug, you can return it to the stall for the deposit amount. Or, you keep it! We collected some from our last Germany Christmas market trip and so wanted to do the same here. We have already collected one from Dusseldorf and Koln, so we needed one here. That means, we must have a gluhwein as well!

We shopped the couple Christmas markets until we had seen and done what we wanted to. We weren’t going to kill time here, though. We wanted to have an easy night back in Dusseldorf, so we headed back to the train for the 3:45 departure.

An Aachen specialty is called Printen. It's a gingerbread-type cookie made with only flour, water, and spices. When it comes out of the oven, it's hard, almost brittle-like texture. When left out, the moisture from the air makes it soft. They sell them both crunchy or soft, with nuts, and/or covered with chocolates. I bought quite a few packages of them, they were delicious!
One of the final remaining gate from the old city walls

Once we got back to Dusseldorf, we went to a Katsu restaurant and got the pork filet katsu curry and chicken katsu curry. I also got the yuzu lemonade, called Yuzuka.

We discussed what our plan would be for tomorrow. We both feel pretty beat at this point in the trip. The original plan was to take another day trip tomorrow to Maastricht, a city back over the border in Netherlands. However, that would be over an hour and a half over two train trips. We are assuming we will take the day tomorrow to rest and recoup!

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