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Published: August 7th 2007
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Mini Castle?
from the bus, I like the looks of this building! We arrived in Frankfurt earlier than scheduled, around 9am rather than the original scheduled time of 9:30. So the answer to question #1 is yes. During dinner I watched the movie "Because I said so" with Mandy Moore. I thought it was cute. Our flight also had a bit of "eye candy" with a group of handsome soldiers. One young man was in our row and was a fun talker. Once they landed they had a 5 hour bus ride to their station. There was also a "High maintenance woman" in front of me. Nothing seemed to please her and she made a rude comment about how can all these Americans afford to go to Germany.
Question #2's answer was approximately 30-45 minutes of a twilight sleep listening to the music of King Arthur on my mp3 player. Yes I had visions of handsome knights sweeping me off my feet to the lands of Camelot. ha ha
After going through customs question #3 was answered. Yes, our luggage arrived the same time as us. Thank goodness no missing undies, bras, socks, shirts etc. The best part was that none of my liquids or gels exploded as I had feared. We
also found our meeting place easily and patiently waited for our tour director to pick us up. We were hoping for a handsome male tour director like our Scotland trip, but Suzi joked and said "We're due to get a chick". Lo and behold at 10:30 a blond female with a Cosmos sign came & picked us up. lol She seemed really nice. There were about 10 people on the bus which took us to the Holiday Inn, Frankfurt City. Driving through part of the city, I saw the Hammerman statue which I wanted a picture of but never did get one. We also saw some buildings with great architecture. There was a festival taking place with people bungee jumping in between buildings on the streets and even Scottish bagpipers!
We arrived at the hotel at 11:10am and turned out that this guide wasn't ours and there were actually 4 separate Cosmos groups! We met our real guide, Tunde (also a female) at the hotel. More good news was that we were able to check in upon arrival! Our room was on the 8th floor with a tiny balcony and views of part of the city. The rest of the
day was free until tonight when we met our group and tour director. We figured by the time we get to the hotel until the welcome meeting, we have about 4-5 hours of free time. I thought that should be enough for us to get lost in the city of Frankfurt! haha
The 1st dilemma was when Suzi found out her curling iron wouldn't fit the plugs here. She had a UK adapter instead of a European one, so the quest was on to find a store that carried either a curling iron &/or a universal adapter. We asked our guide where to go & she told us to take the bus but also informed us that not many stores would be open until 1pm because it being a Sunday and the festival that was going on.
While we were trying to figure out the bus system and the correct one to get on, we met a friendly couple from Canada doing the same thing. (trying to figure out the system, not looking for a plug, he he) We hung out with Liam & Sylvia who had just visited Ireland. We took bus 36 to the city center on
Nice views
of Frankfurt from our hotel balcony a pedestrian only street. They were kind enough to let us follow them for 2 hours. They even helped us look for stores which none were opened at 1pm. It started raining for about 10 minutes and was warm. We saw a Star-bucks and took cover while Liam and Suzi got coffees. It was when my bum hit that chair, I started to doze off and it wasn't because of the company. I just all of a sudden felt sleepy and then after my head nodded I caught myself & was awake again to walk more of the streets of Frankfurt.
Finally at 2pm, some stores started opening and we found Frankfurt's equivalent to Walmart called "Woolworth". It was funny because there was a crowd of people waiting to go in kinda like Black Friday, only more civilized because the people walked into the store and did not run. The only curling irons they had were crimpers, straighteners and one 1 inch barrel one. Suzi had wanted a bigger one but as they say, "Beggars can't be choosers" and after a half hour decision she bought it. lol By the time we made it back outside, our new found friends
frankfurt City
I set the camers on the ledge for this shot were no where to be found. We looked around but no luck but we did get to hear the bagpipers playing. We found a Conrad's store & she ended up buying an adapter that works for 150 countries. Yea! Now we needed to find our way back on our own to the hotel. It wasn't as hard as we had thought and we found the correct bus (#36) and were back to the hotel around 3pm. By this time we were pretty hungry so we just ate at the hotel's Biastro Bar where I had the biggest hamburger I have ever had in my life along with the best Shoestring Fries!
We had our welcome meeting with 2 of the tour directors and the other Cosmos group which Liam & Sylvia were in. We were told that drinks were not included with our hotel dinners, not even pop, tea or coffee! The kicker for me was when she said we would have to pay to use the toilets! I had not budgeted for these things. There was no sunset because we wanted to see one. lol It was hidden behind the haze. Our room was muggy so we left the
hotel room
Holiday Inn balcony door opened. We figured if someone made it to the balcony, we would hear them. We attempted to go to bed at 8pm but I was awoken by a weird siren sound before 11pm. Thinking it was sirens outside, I closed the door but still heard it just the same. Here it was coming from the air conditioner! Suzi was also up by this point & we ended up watching tv with the making of "Star Wars" in German! That was quite funny! A few moments later, we heard Boom, Boom & we sprang (is that a word?) from our beds in our nightgowns to see the matter. It was fireworks going off in the distance and we had a great view of them!
When we thought they were over a few more would go off then quit for a couple minutes then the cycle repeated. This went on for about 45 minutes. People probably thought we were nuts going back & forth in our nighties every few minutes. lol We finally went back to bed after midnight, but I didn't fall asleep until 2am which sucked since we had a 6am wakeup call for the next day.
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