Frankfurt am Main

Part One of my journey was Florence, Italy (or as the locals would say with a thick accent I could not imitate: “Firenze, Italia!”).

But, the trip actually started with a short introduction in Germany! While layovers are typically just an annoying roadblock on your path to your much anticipated vacation, a 12-hour European layover isn’t so bad when you take advantage of all it has to offer.  Tom had been to Germany before, and I had not. So when our cheap flight landed us in Frankfurt, we saw all there is to see in this fifth-largest German city in one day.

So to start…a budget-friendly stop over in:

FRANKFURT

With one of Europe’s largest airports, Frankfurt is a pretty popular layover pitstop. Fortunately, a very foreigner-friendly train system takes visitors from the gigantic airport to the city center for only a few Euro.

The Sites

• Römerberg (Roman Mountain): the historic heart of Frankfurt and often the first stop for tourists.  A great spot to get the first taste of German culture, and a few great pics, too.
• Frankfurter Dom/Cathedral: main church of Frankfurt. From the 14th century onwards, kings of the Holy Roman Empire were elected in this Catholic church. From the mid-16th century to the late 18th century, emperors were crowned here.
• Grosse Bockenheimer Strasse: one of several areas for food and shopping.
• Senckenberg Natural History Museum: great natural history museum for only 8 Euro. We were fortunate enough to see a traveling exhibition with Lucy, the world’s oldest known human remains.

For our brief tour of the city, we really only spent the 2 Euro to get into the city and 8 Euro for entry into the museum.  Oh, and of course the food ….

The Food

• Breakfast: cappuccino – the jet lag cure when you skipped an entire night of sleep and face unnaturally early sunshine
• Lunch: sausage and baked potato with fresh sour cream, paired with sparkling wine
• Snack: beer, beer, beer!

There were a few museums that we didn’t have time to catch, but overall we covered Frankfurt in about 8 hours. Definitely the perfect layover city so that next time I visit Germany, I can focus on Munich and Berlin!

Next, the real vacation begins ….