In 2013, my wife and I took a trip through Italy stopping at a five cities over a two week period. We flew into Venice and then open-jawed it out of Rome with a connection through Dusseldorf, Germany both ways. When you are flying on miles your options for direct flights are really limited (especially if you are being frugal with your miles like we try to be and fly during “supersaver” periods where it is only 40,000 for roundtrip to anywhere in Europe). On the flight to Venice our layover was pretty short – about two hours – but on the way back it was an overnighter so we decided to get a hotel in downtown Dusseldorf (rather than staying at the airport) and had the opportunity to enjoy the old city center.
We walked through the center and ate at the most traditional German restaurant in town (the name escapes me) and the waitstaff did not speak any English which made the ordering challenging (since the menus were also all in German). We aren’t complaining – it was Germany of course – but just stating a fact that we weren’t in the more touristy Munich or Berlin areas where they seem to cater more to non-German speaking populations. We enjoyed walking around and spent some time walking on the riverwalk. My wife took this picture of the sheep hanging out in the grass on the opposite side – this isn’t something you see all the time (ever?) in large US cities – Dusseldorf I think is the third largest city in Germany and one of their industrial hubs (hence why American Airlines flies alot of international flights through there) so we found it quite unique to just see a bunch of sheep enjoying the weather just like we were.