My husband and I have long wanted to visit more cities in the north of Germany, especially Düsseldorf. I read last year in a Germanwings magazine that Düsseldorf has an area known as "Little Tokyo" with tons of authentic restaurants and shops. This is in large part because Düsseldorf reportedly has the highest population of Japanese citizens in Europe, thanks also to the bi-weekly flights between the city and Tokyo. With our interests piqued, we decided to use the long Easter weekend as an opportunity to see if the city lives up to its hype. 

To get there, we used our Deutsche Bahn cards to purchase train tickets on the ICE. It's only about 2-1/2 hours from Stuttgart to Düsseldorf, and the discount we get with our bahn cards make them well worth it. The train followed the course of the Rhine River, a fact I wish I'd have known before so that I could have positioned myself on the right side of the train as we travelled north. The views were stunning! It seemed as if around every bend we passed another castle and another picturesque German village. Perhaps there could be a Rhine River cruise in my future...