Day 1 - Frankfurt

City Square in Frankfurt.

We landed early this morning after an eight hour overnight flight and watching Godfather II and III (as preparation for Sicily). The first Godfather was watched on a previous American Airlines flight.

Got to the Frankfurt Airport Hilton Hotel and a room wasn't ready, but were invited go to the lounge and have some breakfast while they prepped a room for us quickly.  So, after a light breakfast, we got our room and laid down for a quick 1 hour nap.  We've discovered that works best for us on these TransAtlantic flights.

After the nap, we got up and hit the town--softly. We went to buy tickets for their subways, and discovered we couldn't use our credit card, as we didn't have pin # for it. And it did not seem to like our cash, but after several attempts, it relented and accepted them.  Then, made our way and started learning what signs to look for (they have both an S-bahn and a U-bahn). It was a lot of trial and error, but we eventually managed and the homeward trip was smoother than the outbound trip.

City Hall...and a Christmas tree in work!

We got to see the Town Hall (Romer) (built in 1336) with the big Christmas tree that they started to put up.
We also popped into a few stores selling various Christmas items.

The "Fountain of (in)Justice"

Unfortunately, the Fountain of Justice was covered over, so couldn't see that.  But, did get to go in to both St Christopher's Church as well as the Cathedral for Saint Bartholomew, which is not technically a Cathedral, but was where several Germany Kings and "Holy Roman Emperors" have been crowned between the 1300s and 1700s.

A tour group huddled together in the cold...

Iron Bridge...built 1868-1869...over the Main ("mine") River.

We finally crossed the Iron Bridge (which was 150 years old) and went to a restaurant that had been suggested by an Engineer at Lufthansa, who also suggested we have "apfelwein" (apple wine) and "green sauce", both of which are specialties in this area. 

"Downtown" Frankfurt, from the Iron Bridge...also known as "Mainhatten".  :-)

Strolling on a damp and chilly day, on a cold iron bridge!!

Frankfurters...no REALLY!!!!  And Beir!!!
(And some "weird" green sauce)

Somewhere along the day Bill connected Frankfurt with Frankfurters,  So, we had both Frankfurters and Frankfurter (green) sauce, which is a cold pureed cucumber sauce with 7 different spices. And of course, a glass of apfelwein and another of beer!  At the end, the waitress asked how liked it, and in a spontaneous and unplanned moment of honesty, Bill says of the Green Sauce, "This was kind of odd!"  Her shocked looked and exclamation, "WHAT?!" suggested more tact may have been in order.  But then she said it took her 35 years to get to like it, and laughed at us.

After our bite to eat, we found our way back to the hotel for a quiet evening and planning to head to bed early. Tomorrow we have a tour of the airport (Theresa can barely keep her excitement down) and then head out to Rome.