break dance, not hearts.

woooo wooooo!
we are successfully in COLOGNE.  or Köln, if your German. or Koeln, if your german, but cant find the ö on your keyboard.

anyways its really cool. you get out of the trainstation and the cathedral is RIGHT THERE. (ps martin, i also heard it was older than the o'keefe ranch...and laughed so hard when i read that).
anywwho that was really sweet. we got in last night and it was all cold and rainy, and we did our laundry. then got döner kebaps from a very delicious place down the road..
um....then today we woke up and went for a walk. we went to the cathedral, and there was a service happening, as it is Sunday...and we felt bad being tourists in a church that was being used so we left. we were going to walk up the 509 steps of the tower, but decided...that it was a better idea to go across the river to the lookout tower with an elevator.
so we did. we walked across the main bridge, and its really cute, because couples put locks on the fence part of the bridge, to show they're love for each other and stuff, and it was covered in locks. and i think that its a common wedding gift or something, because a LOT of them were engraved with dates, and it was just so beautiful. and one of them, there were two green locks, each with a name, locked to a fence, also locked together with a mini red lock, which had a date, and then a little heart key chain was attatched. it was actually adorable.
then we got across the river and went to the lookout tower. Köln is a very pretty city, and not built up very much. the highest point is pretty much the cathedral. on the river, the houses and restaurants look a lot like seaside towns. the buildings are very  narrow and tall.
after that we went to the...wait for it...CHOCOLATE MUSEUM!!!!!!! AH and it was just as amazing as it sounds! it was so much fun! and you walk in and buy your ticket, and they hand you a chocolate! and its an actual museum, about the history of cocoa and all that stuff, and even brings awareness to cocoa farmers who are being taken advantage of. did you know that 75% of cocoa farmers never taste chocolate?? so sad.
theres even a little rainforest area  that you walk in and its all rainforesty and it has the climate adjusted to what is needed to grow cocoa beans. really cool.
then, you walk into this room, andthere are all these machines, and it is how they go from cocoa beans to chocolate bars. a lot like willy wonka, except not colorfully painted. and then you walk farther, and theres this massive chocolate fountain, and a lady handing out chocolate fountain samples.
*Mary and Martin, your chocolate fountain was put to shame by this one. and Spencer...youd have gone insane. like, the first time we went to marble slab, times five.*
then keep walking, and a machine showing the melted chocolate being put into molds, and then wrapped, by chocolatiers!!!!
at the very end of the tour there was a cafe, that looked hella expensive, and a chocolate store...
so we bought a bunch of lindt chocolates. and ate them.

---t