A break for Kat

After a few too many nights cooped up in a cabin in the woods with the boys, I took off for the bright lights of Dusseldorf for shopping and girl time with Alex. Ahh, cafes. I have missed cafes. The English version is so disappointing – a cafeteria serving chips, pies, jacket potatoes and the standard three types of toasted sandwich.

The European preference for outdoor eating and drinking is great, if you can avoid the smokers. And it is always a bit amusing how the seats are often organised in rows facing the sun or passersby. But the posh part of dusseldorf takes it a bit far – the footpath is constricted by the cafes, with all the seats facing the footpath and the shop windows for the designer label shop. No wider view, no sun.

And equally odd: The bars on the edge of the Rhine, where they import sand to give it that beach feeling, and your shoes that horrible gritty feeling. The people who chose to sunbake on the edge of one of the greatest transport highways/sewers in the world – the Rhine. Ahh, Europeans.