Hiking to Benrath and Christmas castle!

Finally, today was like a real December weather, a rather bad one, although in this category I’d rather say it was a fairly good day. For such a day, I got a brilliant decision of hiking in Düsseldorf: it was nearby, and rain proof.

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So, it took only something like 15 min to get there from Düsseldorf. It was hard to believe that there were quite a few people from Duisburg, Essen or even Dortmund. Well, that might have been because I wrote that the Benrath Castle was a UNESCO world heritage, which turned out to be wrong. But at least I didn’t do it intentionally, and I’m pretty sure that the ones who came were nevertheless happy to have done so. I mean, wherever it is, usually people are glad to be in the nature in the end. Just stop complaining about the train journeys.

As you can see on the map above, there was no up and down at all today (who’d have thought in the neighbourhood of Düsseldorf). And not quite surprisingly, there was no wilderness today. But along the Rhine, you can somehow find a nice area, if it’s not something like the industrial area around Neuss. That’s where we essentially hiked today. So we were not entirely out of the civilisation, but we were still walking through neat forest paths.

Well in the first half it drizzled a little bit. But then whenever it was drizzling we had a solid ground. Well, anyway the muddiest locations weren’t that bad today anyway.

We had a break at this place called Café Hotte-Hü. There were a few tables outside and parasols, which quite obviously didn’t interest the staff inside, so we simply used the installation. In the same effort as last week to reach the Christmas market as late as possible in order for the sky to be dark, we (Zaman and I) tried to elongate the break as much as possible. So I kind of had to enter the café at some point, where I got a cup of espresso. Well, this was okay, but when we wanted to pay, the old waiter was trying to be funny or tell some jokes, which somewhat confused us because it was … not really funny… Well, it didn’t go much beyond confusion, so it’s okay.

I found the second half more beautiful than the first part, even though we were essentially only walking along the Rhine. If you walk there, try to look at the left hand side. The difference is significant.

We walked through the huge garden of the Benrath Castle and reached the Christmas market. We did a similar trail last year. It was raining at that time. Today, by the time we reached the castle, the sky was entirely clear. Pity for those who cancelled in the last minutes because of the weather, because it was simply quite okay the entire day today.

And the Christmas market in Benrath is also a rather cosy place. There are famous Christmas markets in North Rhine-Westphalia, but those ones are simply overcrowded. You’d rather be interested to visit something like this one, where you can get a Glühwein and find enough space to enjoy it.