Dusseldorf welcomes HRH the Monkey King!

Friday started off slowly with a lazy breakfast of ham, cheese, ham, cheese, ham, cheese, cheese and ham, followed by a couple of cheeky beers from my mini-bar - disgusting......all that ham and cheese!




We then preceded to meander around the town and get our bearings which clearly hasn't worked as we appear to get lost every time we leave the hotel.

However we did find a bar late morning serving some very nice ales and we tried both the light and dark beers - preferring the dark side of course! - before stepping out into the cold to find another watering hole. Still no snow here yet.








Our next port of call was a fantastic 80s rock bar complete with non-stop soft rock playing and a barmaid with a long curly perm - both Chadders and I couldn't get enough of it and spent the remainder of the afternoon sipping dark beer and listening to the breadth of German (and even some bands we had heard of) euro-rock.. Sadly they didn't play any David Hasselhoff at all!!

By this time we were starting to hear rumblings that HRH was at a UK airport getting ready to fly over and join us so we beat a retreat from the rock fest to find some food.

We found a small Italian with a menu we didn't understand (nothing new there) and ordered the catfish with some help from a very brusque librarian-type waitress. Excellent choice as it was very good!

HRH informed us that he was in a taxi heading to the hotel so we paid the bill and froze to death on the walk back.

Earlier in the day we had seen a number of homages to the great monkey king - a sample of which are below.








Now as a threesome we attempted to get back into Herr Schumacher's bar but it was so packed that we left and walked back to the old town to show KL the delights of the rock bar. Again that was busy too and we had to resort to sitting outside under a patio heater. KL's gillet kept him warm though.




Chadders was befriended by a nice German man and they seemed to get on like a house on fire. So much so that I think he's now one of Chadders' facebook friends and I did hear a vicious rumour that they've been tweeting about each other ever since ;o)

After several Jagermeisters and more dirty, dark beer we made it back to the hotel for a night-cap and retired back to our rooms/cells - KL also has the pleasure of his own private cell block too!