293/365 Sunny autumn weekend

An old friend of Martin's was near Cologne on business last week and came over here to visit for the weekend. As the weather was beautifully sunny, we went on a little outing on both Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday we went to the "Drachenfels", a mountain a little south of Bonn (about 45mins from here) overlooking the Rhine, crowned by an old castle ruin and rewarding the climb with some spectacular views.

On Sunday we went for a hike in the hilly countryside east of Cologne - a lovely mix of farm and pasture land with forest and brooks and just enough hillyness to keep the walk interesting without being too challenging.

We were especially lucky to find that the end of our walk, which we had expected to be a small village and hoped for a pub there, turned out to be a former monastery turned into a major conference hotel-cum-café with a huge outdoor terrace, where we could bask in the autum sunshine while enjoying not only a view over meadow and forest, but also the typical local afternoon dish: waffles with hot cherries, cream and ice-cream:

Yum! :D