*POST UPDATED OCTOBER 2026
Hi friends! As you may or may not know, Fiancé & I recently visited the western German city of Cologne. A trip to Germany wasn’t initially on the cards for us this summer, but when we ran into an extortionately priced flight home from Bologna to Dublin, Cologne was our saving grace. From Bologna, we were being quoted, no joke, three times what we’d normally pay for the exact same flight. Three times! Refusing to spend so much money on a flight out of principle, we widened our search to look for cheap flights to cities we could layover in. When we realized we could fly from Bologna to Cologne, spend one night in Cologne, fly from Cologne to Dublin the next day and still spend less than one direct flight – we were sold! And so, we found ourselves with a short stopover in Cologne, Germany!
A stopover is basically the exact same as a layover, just slightly longer; anything under 24-hours is a layover, and anything over is a stopover. Including a slight delay on our flight into Cologne, we ended up with just under 26-hours in the city. As neither of us had ever visited before, our plan was to take it easy – walk around, see the highlights, and eat + drink all the German goods on offer.
Below is a list of everything we got up to during our time in Köln – sleeping, eating, drinking, and tourist-ing!
Enjoy!
getting there
Getting to Cologne was pleasingly easy! Here are the steps we took:
from Bologna, we few direct into Cologne Bonn Airport. The flight from Bologna took about an hour and a half, cutting our overall journey back to Dublin nicely down the middle.
Cologne Airport is located a mere 12km from the city centre, so getting in & out is extremely easy! We took the S-Bahn from the train station located inside the airport straight into the Hauptbahnhof, the central station.
the train into the city takes around 15-minutes, and, as far as I’m aware, runs every 15/20-minutes depending on the time of day. Our tickets cost €3 each, one way, and we bought them at a machine in the station. It’s an extremely handy service! More information on train/bus services here.
the Hauptbahnhof is located smack bang in the centre of the city, right next to Cologne Cathedral, and is likely only a short walk away from wherever you’re going. Our hotel was just a 9-minute walk away!
Easy-peasy, right?
where we stayed
Hear me out: in order to make this little stopover through Germany worth it, we had to keep our accommodation costs low. Where we ended up wasn’t exactly our first choice of hotels – it was reminiscent of our Luxembourg hotel – but it cost us less than €80 a night!