Normandy Adventures: Day Trip to Dusseldorf

Mandy:

We soon found out that there is not too much to do in Koln, especially since we didn't want to visit anymore museums or memorials. After speaking to Christoph, we decided to take a day trip to a nearby city called Dusseldorf. It was only a 25 minute train ride but it was a bit pricey (25 euros a person for a round trip ticket). We chose to go to Dusseldorf because they have one of the largest Japanese communities in Europe due to the large number of Japanese companies with a European branch located there. The first thing we did when we got to Dusseldorf was to find a delicious Japanese restaurant for lunch in Japan Town! Norm looked up a few restaurants on Trip Advisor the day before and they were all located on one street so it was very easy to choose one. We ended up choosing the one called Takumi with lots of Japanese businessmen waiting outside for the restaurant to open at noon. It was a ramen restaurant and it definitely did not disappoint. Norm got the karage shoyu ramen lunch special and I got the regular miso ramen. The karage was nicely deep fried and the chicken was still moist and our ramens were delicious. After lunch we headed to the “German Champ D'Elysee” street since Dusseldorf is also known for being a great shopping city. Unsurprisingly, the shopping street is in no way comparable to the one in Paris. We also checked out the old town and Norm had the Dusseldorf local brewery beer which is a lot darker than the one in Koln. Matthias told us that there is a big rivalry between Koln and Dusseldorf because of the two distinct beers they offer. (Make sure you don't order a kolsch in Dusseldorf!) Unfortunately, almost all of the historic buildings and monuments were destroyed during WWII so there wasn't much to see in the old town. We also didn't end up buying anything in Dusseldorf and decided to have a second lunch before heading back to Koln. (Good thing we didn't buy the return trip in advance because we initially thought we would return to Koln around 10pm.) We went to Naniwa Sushi to try our luck with finding good sushi in Germany. The sushi was expensive and it wasn't as delicious as Toronto (surprise surprise =P). We made it back in time to Koln for me to go to this store called Offermann that had really good deals on Longchamp bags. I think I am officially a big fan of Longchamp now that I own 6 of their bags =D We took the rest of the afternoon to relax in our airbnb apartment since it was raining outside anyway. We only left again to grab dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant called L'Osteria. It was one of the largest restaurants I have been to in Europe. We are off to Frankfurt tomorrow for 2 nights and then we're on our way back to Canada!!