Considering I hadn't got quite as drunk as the other two on the previous night I was feeling reasonably good in the morning, not good enough to get up before Mr Active Clifford mind you but still the best I had managed thus far into the holiday.
By an accident of fate we ended up next to a Steak House whilst deciding what to have for breakfast so once again we sheepishly headed in to have our share of meat.
I was, a bit, determined to find something exciting to do with the remaining afternoon and considered going to the Zoo or maybe to the huge sauna and swimming pool complex but the overwhelming wish of the other two was to spend the afternoon shopping which, with bad grace, I ended up doing as well. Cologne has many shops arranged in dull streets which may as well as been in Wolverhampton or Slough and this wasn't very exciting but eventually Richard managed to find some Lego for Joshua and we were allowed to go and find a pub.
I had wanted to go into the pub called Papa Joes every since I had seen it on the Friday but it was just ridiculously busy every other time we had been past it but now finally on Monday it was reasonably quiet and we found a nice couple of seats served by an outstandingly attractive waitress ordered drinks, and soaked up the atmosphere.
There was certainly a lot of Ye Olde decoration in the bar but since lots of this consisted of 1920's pictures of naked young women this was quite interesting, they also had a kind of big organ thing with life sized models of traditional Germans playing instruments which they turned on every couple of hours and was quite surreal. We had quite a few drinks in here but eventually left to get a kebab and go and see the Station pub which Richard loved so much once more before we left. Weirdly it was by now quite late and we had to be up around 5AM on Tuesday to catch the plane so we were only planning on having one more in the Station before heading back.
One turned into two and then three during which time Phil & I convinced ourselves we should go back to Papa Joes and have our last beer in a pub which was somewhat more traditionally German than the Station bar was, Richard couldn't be persuaded claiming that one more beer would see him turn into a party monster and lead to an all night drinking binge and not being allowed on the plane back home.
Although Phil seemed like he could quite easily embark on exactly such a binge drinking spree the last few days had caught up with me and we did just have one last drink and made our farewells to lovely Cologne and it's ubiquitous Koelsch.
Next day wasn't much fun, up far too early, airport, plane and back in rainy old Birmingham in time for breakfast at 9AM. Richard is a nutcase and went to work whilst I relished the opportunity of catching up with Neighbours.
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