Cologne with Thalys

Hi Everyone, 

a few weeks ago an amazing invitation landed in my mailbox. Thalys invited me on a 2day press trip to Cologne in Germany. I was really excited and looked forward to discovering this city ! Unfortunately my health didn't really cooperate with me :-( because I fell ill the day before we left. I still wanted to go and I decided to make he best of this amazing trip. So, excuse me for not looking my best :-s ! 

 After a short 1h 45 min Thalys - ride, we arrived in Cologne. When we stepped out of the train station, we immediately fell in love with the city! It was hot outside, everyone was so stylish and dressed up and you could feel that this is an open-mined creative city! 

We visited Saul Steinberg's  The Americans  Ludwig museum which showed the colossal mural-collage he made for the U.S. pavilion at the 1958 Brussel's World's Fair (of which we weren't allowed to take pictures) . Afterwards we had dinner at the Ludwig restaurant. 

We then headed out to check in at the Hopper hotel which is located at the 'Belgisches Viertel' and it's a renovated cloister transformed to a design hotel.After we checked in at our hotel, we went to 'Le Bloc' which is a fashion & design festival. This was the best part of the trip ! All the participating shops were open till midnight, there was live music, DJ's in all the shops, everyone was drinking beer and chilling and it was sooo hot outside! 

This really was 'Summer in the City' ! I could of stayed there all night, but as I was felling really ill from my cold, we went to bed early. 

The next day we were up early and taxi's were waiting outside of our hotel ro take us for a tour along the  harbor. This was the final stop of our trip to Cologne before going back to Belgium ! 

I can now say (despite of my cold and feeling ill all the time and looking not-that-great :-p) Cologne you were amazing !!

Thank you Thalys for the amazing trip !

www.thalys.com