3rd-6th June 2010
This year having been horribly cold and rainy, the weather forecast finally promised the first really beautiful summer for these days:
Thursday is free here (Feast of Corpus Christi) and ? expecting great weather - I closed my practice on Friday too!
In my neighbourhood of Oberkassel I happened to meet dozends of oldtimer cars on this long weekend.
Foto 1: Barbarossaplatz looking on Dominikanerstr. : Mustang, Ply, E-Type, Porsche 911 Oldies- all of them parking illegally? The drivers are sitting in front of ?Muggel? (Dominikanerstr. 4), one of the most popular pub for YOUNG people of ALL ages...
Behind the Mustang is Piazza Saitta - my favorite italian Restaurant. We- my parents, my wife, my grown daughters and myself- had Mother-In-Laws 80th birthday?s diner Saturday here: they put their tables on the cobble stones in the foreground after noon. Sure I took mother some 25 mls in my Ply from her home in Essen-Werden (Krupp Steel City) to D?sseldorf.
We have ~ 40 Restaurants, Caffes, pubs, beergardens, french fries, Gyros places within 15 minutes walking distance from here. Kitchens are italian (most), greek, spanish, argentine, indish, turkish, french, austrian, portugeese, jugoslavian and ? yes- german. And my pracice is 4 minutes by bicycle from home. Crossing the river, we have the river bank plus downtown with the ?longest bar counter of the world? i.e. hundreds of places to go in a square mile (30 minutes walking).
Foto 2: give DUESSELDORF, GE in Google earth and You easily find this peninsula in the river Rhine.
Foto 3: Corvette in Dominikanerstr. #11. Beyond the alley?s left turn, In the green frame, my house -sorry, cancelled! -. Driver is eating opposite side at Hot # 14.
Foto 4: Mercedes 280 SL in front of # 6 (Engels + V?lker real estate). The best french fries and gyros place I know is # 8 (Greeks, green sun umbrellas)! Hot- La cucina is #14 (white sun umbrella), the best italian noodles and pizza place.
Foto 5: Mercedes 280 SL in front of # 6 (Engels + V?lker real estate). The best french fries and gyros place I know is # 8 (Greeks, green sun umbrellas)! Hot- La cucina is #14 (white sun umbrella), the best italian noodles and pizza place.
After 6 mls, we took a break at medioeval suburb of Kaiserswerth. Founded in the 7th century, they built a castle on river rhine to get dutys from the ships. Today, ruins remain plus a beautiful small city. Foto is at Stiftsplatz, the white building is from 12th century. See:
http://www.gaestehaus-falkenberg.de/index.php?content_tpl=impressionen_en
This was a really spledid weekend, offering meets to some dozen other old cars on my trips. In the evening, we had a short summer thunderstorm, so I had some time and thought I should take the opportunity to share. I always enjoy everybody?s road shots!
Greetings from D?sseldorf!
Go,
Thanks for sharing your great weekend with us, beautiful photos as always
Bob
Great pictures and very interesting descriptions. Thanks for posting.
I wonder how much accelerated wear driving on those cobblestones puts on suspension pieces and steering gear through?? Great pics thanks for sharing.
Here is a pic from last fall of our car in a colonial village in Maryland. We took a trip from The POC fall meet and stopped for lunch in this spot. Granted not as old as Dusseldorf, but founded in 1764 and pivotal in American Civil War activity.
dear plym_46, we have one mile indeed in conbblestone, kept unchanged by citizens vote. I really think twice when having the choice - and take the near highway more likely. Car gets shocked and you hear the screws come loose...
This Barbarossaplatz has its stones newly put. They were recovered from another part of that old street.
Luckily, all the car lanes are asphalted since the 50ies, sometimes just over the old cobblestones.
Some citizens try to get cobbles back- but will remain in minority...
Greetings! Go
Go and Greg,
What would the difference be between coblestone streets and gravel roads as far as the roughness is concerned? I have seen some coblestone streets, but never driven any type of vehicle on them, but I have driven the Plymouth on many dirt and gravel roads down here. I just slow down so that the car doesn't have to absorb the roughness of the road too much.
Gravel roads by their nature provide a random surface from billiard table to washboard and everything in between.
Cobbles by their nature, and similarly with bricks like what used to be used in the states, because they are regular shaped and layed in a pattern, produce a harmonic vibration that gets transmitted up throughthe tires and wheels into the chassis components.
So not only do you need to deal with vertical surface irregularities, (bumps) you also need to deal with the vibration. Kinda like driving
on a bridge with the perpendicular rain groves, but further apart and all the time.
My aunt and uncle lived in Oswego, NY many of the streets there were paved with bricks most notably on the hilly sections. The noise is irratating to the drivers and passenger, and I assume the same harmonics that bother your ears play hell with stuff like tie rods, and A arm pivots, and kingpins.
There are some places here where you can encounter cobbles, Boston, and Baltimore come to mind as the stones were used in ships to ballast them, and then where they were off loaded, they were gobled up for pavement. I am sure their use was a marked improvment over dirt and mud in the 1700's especially for foot and horse and wagon traffic. But when draught wagons and long shoremens push carts were replaced by trucks and cars, and the speed of coveyence increased, I am sure folks were looking for alteratives.