Day 39 - Frankfurt

Saturday I said goodbye to Croatia. My flight left around 4pm that afternoon, so I spent a good portion of the day saying goodbye to everyone that hadn't left yet. Our flight had 6 people from the group and Allysyn's flight left around the same time, so the 7 of us got a big sendoff from the hotel with everyone helping us get our bags into the van.

When we got to the airport, the 7 of us hung out with Matt G. and Stacey whose flight to London was delayed for a few hours. I was supposed to pay extra for the weight of my luggage, but he person I went to was nice and didn't make me pay because my flights had been booked seperately.

Our flight ended up being a little delayed but we arrived in Frankfurt around 6:15pm. It took us a while to get our luggage (for those of us that didn't want to check them all the way through), and change currency, etc. Then we took two cabs to the Hotel Colour. Marc and Bill (both from Pittsburgh) had their own room and I shared a room with Raymond, Jeanna and Jody. It had four twin beds, which was pretty cramped, but it worked.

We all settled in for a few minutes and then went downstairs to redeem our free drink coupon in the hotel lobby. We had a beer that was really good and then ventured out into Frankfurt to explore. We walked for quite a while along a river where I took a lot of pictures. Frankfurt isn't a particularly beautiful city, but it has some charm mixed in with modern architecture which I found interesting.

We eventually made it to an area where our hotel receptionist told us there would be traditional German food. We decided to eat at Adolf Wagner. It was so good! We ordered a pitcher (and this was no ordinary sized pitcher) of apple wine (what Frankfurt is known for) and a platter of pork (supposed to feed a group our size). It was so much food but so good! There were about five cuts of pork...chops, belly, shoulder, ribs, etc. and a sausage for each of us. They served it roasted and mashed potatoes...and of course, sauerkraut. I loved it! Bring me back to Germany any time. :)

On our way back to the hotel, even though we were absolutely stuffed from dinner, we stopped at an ice cream shop. I had a cookies and cream scoop in a home-made waffle cone. It was very delicious. Some of the others had strawberry cheesecake ice-cream with chunks of strawberries in it that looked really good too. As we ate our dessert, we wandered over to a local fair that was going on.

It was so similar to a county fair in the U.S., but smaller size. There was a ferris wheel, bumber cars and some other rides and games. It was cool because it reminded me of home, but everything was in German and the food offerings were definitely different. I didn't have anything to eat there but just walking around and looking at everything was really cool. After that we headed back to the hotel. By that time it was around midnight, so we went to bed pretty soon after that.