Bumps in the road... or in our travel

After Munich, the following had been our original plan: 1) Take a bus to the Memmigen Airport 60km outside of Munich to where our RyanAir flight leaves. 2) Fly RyanAir to Dublin on Sunday evening. 3) Spend night in Dublin near airport. 4) Fly to visit my cousin and family in Leeds the next morning.

We had all the flights and hotels lined up. Then we got to the airport and nothing was flying out of Germany that day because there was a cloud of ash over the airport. Though Dublin was fine, Germany said "no flights out" until Monday. So, we were stuck. it was too late to cancel the hotel in Dublin for that night and our flight to Leeds in the morning was sacked since we wouldn't be there to get on it! Then, the ticket counter folks say that we wouldn't be able to fly out till Wednesday because all the flights were full.

Hanging out at the Memmigen train stations figuring out what to do when our plane wouldn't fly with the ash cloud.

So, after much deliberation and a lot of thinking of different options this is what our new plan became (granted this was all on the fly as we continued to figure out prices and details). 1) We took the train to Ulm, spent the night in Ulm next to the train station. 2) Took the train from Ulm to Cologne, Germany. 3) Hung out in Cologne. 4) Took flight from Cologne to London.

The above picture is us at the bigger Cologne train station, just arrived, but with a more concrete plan for the day! It was a sense of relief to have plans.

One nice thing is that we did get to explore Cologne a little bit. They have one of the biggest churches in Germany... and it is right next door to the train station. It was built in about 1200 and is in a Neo-Gothic style with lots of spires and detail work. When we walked from the train station, my jaw almost dropped.

Here is a photo of the inside. It is a huge tourist stop so there were tons of people but you can easily see why! The ceilings are 140 feet tall and there is beautiful stained glass everywhere. The interesting thing is that in WWII, Cologne was bombed heavily. Expecting the bombing, the stained glass was removed and hidden away for safe keeping. The church didn't receive major structural damage though and was able to be nicely restored. Some of the stained glass is fairly old (though I forget the details).

We ate lunch at a place that was quite out of the way... thanks to the Rick Steve's book. We were the only people in there for awhile. The interesting part about this place was that it has sand on the floor. They change it daily and it helps to condition the old wood floors underneath. The food was delicious also.

This is us waiting at the Cologne-Bonn airport. Yay! We were able to fly to London, though with delays, and arrive safely.

My cousin, Jason, went far above any cousinly-duty and drove 4 hours from Leeds to London Gatwick to pick us up. The airport was on the south side of London which made it further. Then he drove us 4 hours back up to his house, finally arriving at a little past midnight! We were so blessed by him and his help through this travel bump.