Cafe Orlando featured an old-fashioned tin chairrail along and had beautiful, wide divans flanking the wall on which we could sit and eat. Dan and I both ordered the complete breakfast which came with sliced meats, cheeses, butter, jam, healthy bread, rolls, eggs, bacon and hot drink. It was amazing, filling and a great start for the day. This also reflects my experiences in Germany - I have never had a bad breakfast there!
After breakfast, we went to the EL-DE Haus. The EL-DE is a documentation center of the Third Reich and was housed in the former Cologne Gestapo Headquarters. It is one of the few pre-WWII buildings to have survived the bombing (more than 90% of Cologne was destroyed). The building seemed to be made from poured concrete and floor, walls, and ceiling seemed to be painted in a drab color. The audiotour was very interesting and simply reinforced the significance of the horrific events that took place not so long ago. The tour included a visit to the basement prison.
Afterwards, we went to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum where there was a fantastic Impressionism exhibit called Impressio Nismus. Serendipitously, the girls had fallen asleep and we could enjoy and explore the exhibit without interruption. The paintings were excellent and by Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Morisot, Fantin LaTour and on and on...This exhibit was sort of like the CSI behind painting. What was great about it is that there would be an explanation of clues to look for, a painting with such a clue, and a photo/diagram of the painting with where to find the clue. The tour started with basic information, like the importance of color, when certain colors developed and how color combinations. For example, it showed a video time lapse of light on haystacks over the course of the day next to one of Monet's Haystacks. The tour continued with some basic information about painting, such as the advent of the metallic tube in which paint could be kept and not spoil and how this was a revolution from the small bladders that had been used previously to store paint, which would spoil quickly. Other examples of the mechanics included portable easels, pallettes and painter's boxes.
What was interesting is that the paintings presented featured telltale details of they had been painted, such as how pinholes indicating the type of easel on which the work was painted, or unpainted parts of the painting that had been held in place by a tab. There was a huge feature on the "plein air" (outdoor/fresh air) movement that included were x-rays and infrared photos of the paintings where one could see sand and even leaves that had embedded themselves in the paint. There was a section on how planned paintings were, since Impressionistic works were supposed to be more or less spontaneous. This meant how photography influenced painting, how many sketches there were prior, use of geometry in paintings. There were X-rays that showed the original drawings and paintings underneath finished works and how those diverged, how forgeries are detected, how to spot whether a painting was painted in one sitting or multiple, how to detect whether the paint was mixed on the canvas or on a palette, cross-sections with mold attacking the paint, the fallibility of certain paints that fade or gray over time, the differences in effect between matte and lacquered paintings...it was really an incredibly fascinating exhibit. I could easily go through it again.
We to another floor of the museum where we got some spectacular views of the Dom and the Rhine. The girls woke up and it was time to eat a very late lunch. We went to the central square near the Rathaus and had some more hearty German food. Liliane had a pretzel, I had sausage and bread, and Dan had white sausage. We tried two different kinds of ice cream and then decided it was time to part from Cologne. We left at about 6:30 and I spotted a market along the riverbank on our way out of town. Too late this time, but maybe next. 
On a personal note (and to my friend and former instructor Richard's undoubted chagrin), my German began to fail while we were there. I kept interspersing it with Dutch words. Also, we didn't get lucky finding the Cafe Paffgen and the Orlando Cafe. We read about them in Let's Go: Europe 2008. We hadn't used Let's Go for a while, these experiences have renewed our confidence in it as a guide.
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