Adam and I spend our days in pretty much a constant state of yearning for Japan, our favourite place in the world, so when I heard that Dusseldorf has the highest concentration of Japanese people in Europe I thought it was worth looking into it as a possible holiday destination.

Further research only reinforced my views that Dusseldorf would be ideal for us, as it’s known for its art scene and appeared really funky, so I booked Adam and I some flights through British Airways from London Heathrow to Dusseldorf for 3 days.

We flew bright and early, at 7.30am and touched down in Germany at 9.45am. Travel into the city centre was typically easy, as we’ve come to expect from Germany, and we were able to catch the S Bahn into the centre. We paid for a 24 hour ticket which came to 5.15 euros each (you get a discount when paying for multiple tickets).

I did struggle to find budget accommodation in Dusseldorf and ended up booking a room at the ‘Leonardo Hotel Dusseldorf City center’. It was £60 per night but the room was really big and the location couldn’t have been better, as it was on the same road as the train station.

That was quite lucky for us because we arrived in Dusseldorf to torrential rain and despite our best efforts got absolutely soaked during the 2 minute walk to the hotel. Knowing it was early we went to the hotel to drop off our bags but as luck would have it they were happy for us to check in so we were able to spend some time warming up in our room before heading back out.

Our first stop of the day was K21, a modern art gallery, where we paid 18 euro each for a ticket that also allowed us entry to K20, another gallery.

The main appeal of the gallery is their amazing exhibit, ‘In Orbit’, where you can balance high over the piazza on a steel net. The design was inspired by a spiders web and it was very visually spectacular when we walked in. However as we paid for our ticket we were informed it was closed, due to the heavy rain, but may reopen shortly if the weather improved.

We looked around the rest of the gallery, with fingers and toes crossed, and there were a number of really interesting exhibitions to see. Just as were considering leaving we were informed that the Orbit exhibition was now open!

I don’t have any photos of us on it because the first thing you have to do when you get up to the exhibition is put all your items in a locker. You’re then given jumpsuits to get into and if you have long hair you will also be asked to tie up your hair.

After some safety instructions we were allowed onto the nets. I’m short and my centre of balance is low so I was instantly very comfortable, able to run around but Adam, the lanky beast he is, wobbled his way around nervously. I think we spent about 10 minutes on the net, which was more than enough time to explore it all.

Feeling exhilarated we walked into town, luckily the rain had now died off, and had lunch at Kamps, one of our favourite German bakery chains. You can always fill yourself up for next to nothing and the service was so friendly.

We then walked to the Film museum, which cost us 7 euros to enter. There was a huge amount to see, there seemed to be a never-ending amount of rooms filled with technical equipment, film memorabilia, archived pictures. It was all very interesting and a great way to spend an overcast day.

No photos were allowed to be taken in the museum but I bought a postcard to remember my favourite room by.

We decided to do K20, which we’d already bought tickets for, but before we made our way indoors we posed against the funky wall just outside the museum. Great for selfies!

Once again we really enjoyed the gallery and I did sneak a secret picture. It was your typical gallery, lots of white walls and open spaces and me looking meaningfully at things pretending I understand them whilst really just thinking I like the pretty colours.

The rain started up again so we ran for shelter at Ko-Bogen, a mall inside a really modern building. When we walked past it later on in our trip, when the sun was shining, it had lots of people sitting outside, but on this day the area was deserted.

We returned to our hotel and feeling pretty drained by the constant rain/ drying off cycle we’d endured that day we decided to skip going out for dinner and get a takeaway instead! We ended up ordering a pizza from ‘Pizza Grune Insel’ which was just around the corner from our hotel and Adam popped out to get us some beers and we enjoyed dinner in our PJ’s instead!

 

Steps walked: 22,298