Friday March 30th - Kempen to Düsseldorf

I woke late, walked a block to the train station, bought my ticket (10.20€) and caught the 10:15am regional train from Kempen to Düsseldorf. In Düsseldorf I bought a 3 day Welcome Card at the TI across from the train station and took tram 708 directly to my hotel, the Dusseldorf Renaissance. I checked in around noon, did a quick turnaround and was off to explore the city on foot, camera and lenses at hand. This was what I'd characterize as a "high minimalist" camera equipment trip - Canon S90 point & shoot, Nikon D700 body, 16-35mm & 28-300mm lenses and a circular polarizer filter. I also brought along one of my tripods, but I never got a chance to do any night photography, so it was just dead weight resting comfortably in my suitcase the whole trip. After spending three work days in Kempen with too much food and too little exercise, I decided to do a long walk along the Rhine, starting at Düsseldorf's Alt Stadt, which was a quick ride away on tram 701. I stopped first at the 20th century K20 Grabbeplatz museum, in the Alt Stadt, which in my opinion was just okay.

Although rain was threatening, the waterfront walk was very picturesque (first picture below). I walked ~2miles south from the Alt Stadt to Medienhafen, the site of Gehry's buildings (large picture top of page and fourth picture above). I'd read that Gehry's silver building (there are three buildings total - red, silver & white) is supposed to generate interesting reflections at various times of the day, but overcast skies killed the effect. Walking north back to the Alt Stadt, I first stopped at the Rheinturm, which is the tall radio / TV tower seen in the background of several of these shots. A quick elevator ride took me to a commanding view over Düsseldorf. It was a challenge to get a good shot through the windows in the completely enclosed viewing levels, so the second picture below is what I'd characterize as my best effort. Those are the three Gehry buildings in a row near the center of that shot.

Saturday March 31st - Düsseldorf

I woke very late after a shocking 11 hours of sleep, apparently having not realized how exhausting the pace of the trip had been thus far. The late wake-up meant that I had missed my free breakfast at the hotel, so I just grabbed a quick snack, jumped on tram 701 and rode ~45 minutes to the southern suburb of Benrath, where Schloss Benrath, an 18th century pleasure and hunting palace, is located. The front pond (first picture below) is right at the tram stop and all of the grounds were free to visit. There are also two museums on the property. Circling around to the back, the extensive gardens (second picture below) and pools (third picture below) made for a very worthwhile stroll and visit. The site reminded me of a much smaller version of Versailles, which I had last visited less than a month before. Before leaving, I took a few shots of the front of the palace with my point-and-shoot camera mounted on my pocketable Joby tripod (fourth picture below).

I took U bahn 74 from Benrath to the Mitsubishi Halle in Oberbilk where an interesting exhibition was going on. From there I took tram 715 to Adolph Platz where I bought some souvenirs for my son at Mage before continuing on to the Alt Stadt where I enjoyed dinner at the touristy, but still good Fischhaus restaurant. I started out from there to do a walk along the river for some night shots, but a very cold wind had whipped up so I decided to call it a day. I took tram 701 back to the Renaissance where I packed, post processed and backed-up my pictures and sent out postcards to friends and family. On Sunday morning I woke very early to take the 708 tram to the train station where I boarded the ICE 1013 train that whisked me to Frankfurt's airport in about 90 minutes.