With our imminent move to London coming up, our family had to go Germany to get our visa application submitted. Due to some timing problems, we ended up going for a 3.5 day trip prior to the trip to go submit applications.
We spent our first night in Düsseldorf. The driving on the autobahn was far more exciting than Dusseldorf itself. In fact, the highlight of the Dusseldorf stay was a cool park where the kids played in the sandpit. Suffice it to say that Düsseldorf is not coming from this family as a recommended destination. 
The next day, we drove on to Köln (Cologne for us Americans). What a beautiful city! It started out right when we arrived because we walked into the coolest over the top apartment for our 2 night stay. A beautifully redone giant apartment right in the heart of old town Koln made us excited about our newest adventure. Our first stop was to go explore the Dom Cathedral. We were all eager to climb to the top of one of the towers. The picture doesn’t allow full understanding of how tall it was. We climbed 566 steps to the top. (For those of you who don’t think 566 steps is far, it is close to 28 floors of stairs.) Keali was by far the smallest/youngest kid climbing and she made it up without any problems. It was extremely fun and cool and the views were spectacular.
We watched a free Amnesty International concert in the square – Tom Beck was even performing. It was fun walking around the square and recognizing the songs being played in the square. The concert brought out lots of interesting people. After the kids took some candy from “the guy in the white balloon”, we explained to them what he was dressed up as. They didn’t stop talking about it for a few days. (Stellar parenting, I know.)
Köln was cool and relaxing. We met a friend of Scott’s for lunch one day and did cable cars another day to ride over the Rhine River and see some new parts of the city. If you are ever in Europe, Köln was a nice stop.
We ended up going back to Düsseldorf the following week to submit applications for the visas there. After literally all day trying to get the visas submitted, dealing the German (lack of) customer service, and even an international internet café stop, the ultimate reason for the trip was aborted. The immigration consultant company advised improperly and our visas would have been denied. This of course provides the reason for our next adventure: New York City July 4-8. As much as I am dreading the flights and jet lag for such a short stay, I am looking forward to being back in the States with the kids. This will be their first trip to the US since August 4, 2010.
Honorable mention:
