Germany: A day in Düsseldorf

For the flimsiest of reasons, we headed to Düsseldorf for the day in March. The last time we tried to go to Germany in March, they closed the borders because of a global pandemic. Thank goodness we got there (and back) this time!

Düsseldorf is a tiny city so, I'll be honest, a day seems about the right sort of amount time to spend there. We flew in early; even with the hour's time difference, we were in the Old Town by 9.30am. (The flight takes around 55 minutes from Heathrow so it's definitely the sort of place you could do in a weekend without taking any days off.)

     

Olly needed food - I'd eaten in both the lounge and on the plane - Carlsplatz Markt in the Old Town is a farmer's market where you'll find something if you also need a bite to eat. After a quick mooch around - there's not much to see in the Old Town, though it's known as the "longest bar in the world" because of it's Altbier (their local ale) and the fact there are apparently 260 places you can eat and drink in - we headed to Kunstsammlung (K21), one of the city's art museums.

    

It's a walkable city - we did get an Uber from the airport for €20, FYI - but Google suggests that public transport is also pretty decent, cheap and easy to navigate. We chose to go to Kunstsammlung (K21) but there's also the K20 gallery - you can get a combo ticket for both - and spent a nice few hours there. The building is pretty cool, and we saw art by Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Wang Tuo, Hito Steyerl and Katharina Sieverding, amongst others.

     

Lunch was on our mind so we walked over to the Little Tokyo part of the city. Düsseldorf, you see, has the third largest Japanese community in Europe (no surprises here, London and Paris have larger communities) so we were expecting some tasty food! Olly had karaage ramen and I had a chicken katsu curry from Takumi Chicken and Veggie - the ramen was Sapporo style broth and noodles (a city in the northernmost part of Japan), which we'd never had in Japan. And the katsu curry had a chunkier sauce instead of the usual smoother sauce, which reminded me of an Okinawa curry - both very tasty. 

From there we wandered through the city towards the hotel, walking through the main city park and past the rather cool-looking theatre. We stayed at Hotel Indigo, which was nice enough, and after a little rest given we started our day at 4am, we hopped in an Uber and headed to the Frank Gehry Buildings. These are three unique buildings by the famous architect who also did, to name a few, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Olympic Fish in Barcelona and the Dancing House in Prague (I've seen the latter two in person).

    

There you're in a great part of the city for sunset, and it would be rude not to have a glass of Riesling whilst you're in Germany. We did just that at Pebble's Terrase before it was time to head up the Rheinturm (Rhein Tower) to see the city from above.  I'll confess, we didn't rate the view. The coolest thing is that it hovers over the Rhine River but we could have left after five minutes. (We forced ourselves to stay a little longer than that.)

Dinner called after that. We ate at Vossen where I had a locally prepared rump steak - a Düsseldorfer Senfrostbraten, which has a mustard crust on it but was perfectly pink inside - whilst Olly had schnitzel. Both generous portions and very tasty. And that was it! It was back to the hotel, then we headed straight to the airport first thing the next day. Definitely a city you can do in a day. x