Ein Tag in der Stadt (A day in the City)

As I've mentioned before, Louis and I are trying different routes to fly out of Madagascar to avoid Paris. Paris (and Air France) continually gives us mega grief when it comes to connecting flights and lost baggage. Plus to make a huge generalization, Paris people are cranky and snobby. There, I said it. I'm sure there are some nice people...I just haven't met them yet.

This time we flew Tana - Johannesburg - Frankfurt - Montreal and then in reverse (although we had a little detour because of the "Passport Forgetting" incident).

We had six or seven hours to spend in Frankfurt so we found a tourist booth and figured out how to get to town. It was super simple, cheap, and easy to find. Normally, I freak out with local trains and busses and I find them extremely confusing (although I think this has a lot to do with jetlag), but even I could figure these ones out.

The weather was quite cold and I wasn't dressed properly. I ended up looking mega cool and pulling my Lululemon pants under my feet since I was wearing sandals and it was around +10*C. (I know. I'm a wimp).

We got off the train station here:

We couldn't figure out why the trees were pruned like this, but I'm curious what they are like to see in summer.

Overall, this part of the city looked pretty gloomy (part of that was the weather) but I was excited to see this church and wanted to walk over to it.

Most of Frankfurt looked fairly new and modern.

 I just can't help myself. The German language cracks me up.

Ah! Vundurful! Starbuckenshen! (We didn't stop in. Louis has these stupid ideas that we should try "local" coffee shops when we travel. The nerve of that guy!)

We walked a few minutes and found a cute cafe somewhere we could warm up. A cappuccino and an expresso are easy to order in any language. And we had a choice of three menus.

Um... pardon? Maybe the next menu will be clearer.

..Or not..

But this one had pictures!

It made the choice a lot easier.

We walked around and I was always surprised how new the city looked.

Large parts of the Frankfurt city center were destroyed by in the bombings of the second World War, in fact in 1944, a British attack destroyed the entire Old City as well as the East Port (an important shipping center for bulk goods, with its own rail connection). This single attack killed 1001 people.

I think these were the only non-modern buildings we came across.

This busker CREEPED ME OUT. I that there's a seat attached to the pole....but it still was weird.

Again, I had a laughing fit/speaking German attack. I just couldn't stop reading anything out loud. I know it made me look special, but it all sounds so funny!

We came across a 50 minuten boat cruise that started in roughly half an hour. Louis had to pee, and since he's like a nice guy and all that junk, we went into a nearby bar.

I wanted to just pee and leave but the upstanding citizen thought we should at least order something since we used the restrooms. What. Ever.

We were both jetlagged and didn't order any German beer. WTF were we thinking!? (Okay, maybe I was still a little hungover from Las Vegas)

I thought I went into the right bathroom stall...but maybe made a mistake after I saw this picture on the wall. Ooops.

Let the boat cruise begin. I was really, really cold, so we sat on the inside of the boat. I'm such a buzz-kill.

But it meant we had some more German reading material!

When I hear "boat cruise" I expect like, to see something pretty or scenic or interesting.

We saw a lot of factories

And I got A LOT colder (my body temperature doesn't know how to regulate when I'm jetlagged)

But I tried to enjoy the scenic factories.

This looked cool, but we couldn't understand what it was. A church, obviously.

The coolest part of the boat tour was the toilet seat! Yup, I'm still in that phase where I take pictures of bathrooms.

Thankfully our boat cruise was short. We headed back to the airport, went to the lounge, took a shower and had a snack. And GUESS what they had for snacks? Frankfurters of course!! (and made from turkey which means I find them less disgusting). The German food on the airplane was interesting. I would kind of like to grow out of this "picky" eater phase, but it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon.

I think it's super cool that Louis and I spend our layovers together (even though we both go through cranky jetlag moments) and can spend a day here or there just seeing what the city is like.

I'm going to Belgium/Italy in June and meeting up with Louis for a day layover in London and in September we're going to Canada with a one day layover in Munich.  I'm looking forward to them both!