Aachen

Our first stop in Germany was the small university town of Aachen. We were going there specifically to visit Charlemagne's Cathedral because we had seen photos of it in our Lonely Planet guide and wanted to see the famous stained glass. It also has a pretty cool history with the Cathedral being the final resting place of Charlemagne (King of the Franks), and the site of coronation for 30 German Kings and 12 German Queens.

We arrived late on Sunday afternoon and found the town's only campground. There was no reception so we helped ourselves to a spot on their meadow and were pleased to find that we were the only ones camping there.

By this stage we were falling a bit behind schedule so we were hoping we could see the cathedral the same day we arrived. Unfortunately the guided tours aren't run on Sundays so we decided to stay an extra day and catch the english speaking tour at 2pm the following day. Well, would you believe it? We got to the Treasury building around 1:55pm only to be told that the Aachen tourist brochure was wrong. Not only are there no tours on Monday, but the Cathedral is actually CLOSED on Monday. Pooh!

We had the option of doing a tour of the Town Hall but were pretty fed up by this stage so we took some photos and just wandered around town but couldn't find much else to do.

We left Aachen disappointed but we did manage to find a campground guide book which has proved itself to be invaluable. The only problem is that it's written in German. Given that the only full sentence I can say in German is "I have a very good vacuum cleaner", you'd think this would be a problem. Fortunately for us the book shop also sold German to English dictionaries which we've been using in conjunction with the camping guide to work out where we need to be. Onto the next CAMPING PLATZ!