Solid Day

9/26/2009

Frankfurt is great. A whole lot better than Munich. Katherine and I decided that we were going to try to do more walking in the cities because then we would see more, not worry about figuring out the subways, and it would be cheaper. After reading in a book, we realized our Eurail pass would be good on some lines of the subway. We will have to make a mental note to check on that in each city to see if it is valid there. Luckily we got our hands on a free map of Frankfurt and it is an extremely easy and enjoyable city to walk in. Its crazy, but it seemed like everywhere we wanted to go, once we got in the general vicinity of the place, there were signs that would point us directly towards our destination, like signs from God. We thought this was great and so convenient. In addition to that we are getting very good at using maps and navigating about. I am really proud of us, both being self proclaimed directionally impaired people.

I don’t know if taking the Nyquil was that great of an idea going too bed at 1:30. We set an alarm for 8, then snoozed till 9 and it was still extremely hard to get up after that. We took showers then mosied down to breakfast. We are trying to stay at places that offer free breakfasts because then we don’t have to worry about buying breakfast and can save money that way and if we want to grab some bread or fruit from breakfast and take it with us for a snack or lunch during the day, that is also very cost efficient and convenient. Breakfast was ok. I had some cereal and barn popped into my head again with the taste and I realized it was because the milk was whole milk. At this point in my life, at the age of 22, after being raised all of this time on skim milk, I officially can say that I appreciate minimal fat in my dairy.

At some point in the past couple of days, we decided that we were going to stop by Paris on our way from Frankfurt to Brussels. This made sense for two reasons. Number one, there is not a direct train from Frankfurt to Brussels, so we would have to make a connection, which would be a hassle. Number two, Katherine had never been to Paris and really wanted to see the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. Our original plan was to get up early and leave Frankfurt for Paris in the morning, tour the rest of that day, stay the night, tour Paris for the majority of the next day and catch a night train to Brussels. Katherine was on the phone with her dad last night and told him our change itinerary and he said in that case he wanted us to find the nicest hotel we could (within reason of course) and stay two nights in Paris on him and really do it up big. Needless to say, we were on cloud nine with this news. Originally I was shying away from Paris because I feel that it is a city you shouldn’t really slum it in, like with staying in hostels, it needs to be done in an enjoyable manner. Now we are doing Paris the right way and are ecstatic about it!

We went to an internet café across the street from the hotel (because wifi was incredibly expensive in the hotel) to book the hotel, look up things in Paris, check emails and such. The café smelled really weird, but it was .70 euro for a half an hour. We ended up staying more than a half our and the guy didn’t make us pay any more, which was sweet, so we were ok with just intensely purelling our hands after we left. We have a couple of cool ideas for what to do in Paris and will figure it all out more definitively in Paris but we are thinking tomorrow night we are going to go to the Moulin Rouge for a show! Well see.

After the internet café, we had to make a stop at the train station because we needed to make a reservation for the train to Paris tomorrow. Our Eurail timetable book told us that reservation was required for trains to Paris and apparently France has their own special line of trains. So we knocked that out of the way. It cost 5 euro each for a reservation, not too bad especially considering we wont have to worry about sitting in someone’s seat, etc. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. I am so very excited for Paris!

we walked across the river (the Rhine) to an area in the city (Museumufe) where a bunch of museums are lined up in a row. We checked in at an art museum that had a Boccielli exhibit first but it was 8 euro to get in and we weren’t getting too terribly excited about the artwork. The next museum we looked at was the Museum of Communication. With Katherine being a communication major and it only costing 2.50 euro to get in, this was a great museum for us. It turned out to have some very cool exhibits (even though a lot of the explanations were in German and we couldn’t read them). The top floor was all about the eating experience and how it has evolved over the years and over the world. I thought that was highly interesting. The next Museum we passed and checked in with was the Museum of Architecture. When we popped our heads in to see how much it cost, the man proudly and energetically told us that today was the free day and we were more than welcome to check it out. We cruised around there for a while. Neither of us know that much about architecture but it is still cool to look at.

At this point, we were becoming a bit over museums and hunger was setting in, so we headed off back across the river in search for Kleinmarket, which is an open air market kinda deal that is in a huge three story ware house, and we figured we would get lunch there. We also needed to find a bank and get some more cash because vendors definitely favor cash over here to credit cards. At the bank the ATM transaction worked, which was good to know, but we had no idea how much we were charged for the transaction (so we need to figure that out at some point even though it doesn’t really matter it would just be interesting to know). While walking around looking for Kleinmarket, we realized we were in the main vendor plaza that a book told us about. It was cool to be around action. We ended up getting hot dog type things right outside Kleinmarket because we wanted to get a Frankfurt in Frankfurt. It was really good, a big solid dog.

Then we went inside to check out the market. Once again, mom you would have absolutely loved this. Anything that you could ever want was there and fresh and samples galore. Katherine and tried everything. We ended up buying some really good pesto that we sampled, salami, cheese, and tomatoes for dinner possibly and definitely the train ride tomorrow. I was very stoked on the whole experience. We were starting to feel tired (I think our on the go movement finally caught up with us in addition to the NyQuil) and decided to head back to the hotel to take a little nap and freshen up.

Around dinnertime, we were still pretty full from our hot dog lunch and sampling spree, and I wanted to get some apple strudel while we were still in Germany, so we went out in search of that. We ended upon a really chic restaurant and had an extremely goofy waiter that did not speak English very well. He really wanted to talk to us, so kept striking up broken English conversations. When he asked where we were from, we told him the states, and he was like “Ya I know that place, Miami, LA…Tupac” haha. We were like ok we can go with that association. Then we were telling him that we were heading to Paris next, which he understood as we were going to see Paris Hilton, who is apparently making an appearance at a strip club the next night. It was just a bizarre conversation in general. We split an apple strudel and glass of wine and then headed towards a Guinness bar that was advertising games on a bunch of different TVs they had. We passed this place earlier in the day and were hoping that maybe we could get lucky and they would have an American football game on. Unfortunately we were not so lucky, they only had soccer on, but it was an Irish pub with a n English menu and Irish accent, English speaking waiters, which were refreshing to converse with. I got a Guinness and Katherine got a random pilsner and we had a very pleasant night just chatting and being out. We headed back to the hotel around 11 because we have to get up early tomorrow to catch a 9 o’clock train to Paree!

Some random things: Katherine has skype on her ipod touch. It is totally the way to go with calling back to the states. It is only six cents a minute and even if we have to pay for wireless access, she can pick up the network and use skype for free. We are not exactly sure why this it, but it works so we don’t complain. A quote that I heard explains a lot about why there are so many nice cars around, ambulances, garbage trucks, taxis, police cars are all luxury cars. “Germans are very proud that they do cars right. It is worth it to use to spend the money.” I feel that I have packed extremely well and prepared, although my watch battery is dying and therefore making it go very slow, which is a bummer. I have deemed Katherine the official time keeper.