Home Sweet Home

This weeks blog title is so called because my home sickness well and truly disappeared last week, for two reasons.  One, Mum came to visit, and two, Mum brought a sewing machine with her for me!  My flat really feels like home now that I have a little sewing machine humming away in the evenings.

We had a bank holiday in Germany last week, on Friday in order to celebrate Unification day - the day that the Berlin wall came down - an excellent reason to celebrate with a day off work!  Mum flew out to Cologne on Thursday, and I met her after work at a lovely little B&B style hotel right on the river Rhine (literally, we were about 50 feet from the water, with a lovely view over the river too).  We had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant under the shadow of the great Cologne cathedral, and had an early-ish night.

On Friday, we had a hard-core sight seeing day.  Cologne cathedral is very beautiful.  It has some fabulous stained glass windows, and an interesting history that includes being heavily bombed during the war.

We were so long in the cathedral that we had to leave half way through our visit for a service to take place.  We went back in after the service (a hot chocolate from McDonalds for us) and finished off admiring the lovely building.

We decided to hop on a little land train to take us to the Botanical Gardens where we could eat our rolls and donuts, but we managed to get on the wrong land train.  We ended up walking much further than we were meant to, and a 15 minute journey took us an hour in the end!  Still, we made it to the gardens, and they were stunning.  There were lots of hot houses to enjoy, and we even saw a Red Squirrel (we have grey ones in the UK, but red ones are rare).

On Saturday, we went into Dusseldorf on the tram for a wander around and some shopping.  We found a lovely farmers market, and had yoghurt and musili for lunch from one of the stalls.

I had such a great weekend, and I was very sad to see Mum off on the train on Sunday.  Still, Christmas isn't too far away, and at least I have my lovely hubby and my lovely sewing machine!