Off to Aachen, Germany!

First trip on Tuesday morning was a visit to Concentra printing. It essentially was a follow-up after our visit to the historical Plantin Moretus House. They do printing for major magazines and newspapers in Europe. Seeing as all of us raised our hands for "getting our news from an electronic source" it will be interesting to see if the Maymester will go on this visit after 5 years.

Once again, at this point Dave got bored and asked for the camera. 

These are the results:

This is another example of how all of our attention spans were at their end.

The tour got a lot more interesting once the machines were fired up.

Von Hoof! What a woman.

What a great photographer. 

From Concentra we took off towards Aachen, Germany.

The name of the town sounds like someone clearing their throat, especially after hearing Van Hoof pronounce it. 

Once in Aachen, we had a few hours to waste before we had a tour of the Town Hall, treasury and Church of Charlemagne.

Walking around Aachen.

This is where we met back up.

We found a little pizza place for lunch that was SO GOOD.

Later we walked back to one of the main streets to find a gelato store that we had passed on our way from the bus. Finally, gelato. And it was just as good as it looked. 

Heaven on earth.

We walked around for another two hours, stopping for a few minutes to sit down in the park, in the square, at a few restaurants. We split off for the last 30 minutes. I went through a few of the shops and found a really neat purse and the guys came back with Cuban cigars. 

As of now I still favor Belgium over Germany.

Our tour of the town hall ended up getting cancelled and the treasury closed earlier than the church so to the treasury it was!

It was actually a lot cooler than I thought it was going to be. The treasury held all of the treasures of Charlemagne. 

All are reliquaries.

This is 16,000,000 euro to insure.

From there it was off to the Palatine Chapel of Charlemagne. 

There were all different types of architecture. 

I was excited to see the inside of this because we had studied the architecture in my art history class.

Absolutely gorgeous.

The pictures really don't do it justice.

Photo bombed.

After the chapel we went to a German restaurant and had wienerschnitzel. I honestly have no idea what it is but it was actually pretty good. The house beer was great as well.

That night we went back to Antwerp and once again I fell asleep trying to pack on top of my bed..

Only one more day left in Antwerp :(