A Day in Frankfurt

We started the very long journey to Amman on Thanksgiving Monday. The Air Canada flight was surprisingly great. I was able to move over to the middle seats to have three seats to myself which was really awesome because I still was not feeling better and being sleep deprived and in an airplane with more "illness" was pretty much guarantee I would I was not to get better any time soon. I didn't sleep overly well because the trip had a lot of turbulence... wouldn't you know it, the one time I get three seats to lay down you need to wear your seat belt tight not get be thrown around the aircraft. But all is all it was a great flight.

We past EU customs where they only questioned us a bit about why we were leaving the international gate area. My customs guy even told me how I most definitely must go in see Frankfurt with my time because 12 hours in the airport is too long!


After some interesting and questionable advice from the "tourist" office in the airport, we checked our baggage (keeping our purses) and headed down to the trains to go downtown. On the way we saw a "pop-up" tourist group promoting Frankfurt. We asked them about our plans and she the pulled our a much better map than the one we got from the "tourist" office and wrote down which train to take both there and back as well as which platforms to wait at. She then gave us detailed instructions on the best place for breakfast how to get to the museum we wanted to visit and then suggested another museum that had far more famous works and a new exhibit.

We then head out to the town square - Frankfurter Roemer which had beautiful old front to shops (and perhaps homes above). It was quite beautiful and this is where we stopped for a quick cafe latte and breakfast. Sue had a delicious chocolate croissant and I had a sandwich. We sat in the park under the trees and enjoyed our drink.

We then head down to the River Main and crossed one of the many pedestrian bridges. The bridge had many locks of those just married that come here to lock their love to the bridge. Very Parisian! We then walked along the river to the Stätel Museum at the suggestion of the guide. This museum spans over seven centuries of European art over three floors. We first ventured to the "basement" area where they keep the Contemporary Art and we both knew right away this was going to be a great museum. Although not large, it has a ridiculous level of variety! From Andy Warhol to a tiny indoor Alexander Calder.

They has a special exhibit on the second floor called Schwarzk Romantik which I believe means Dark Romanticism and had all sorts of dark painting. From the museum website it describes the collection as "focused on the dark aspect of Romanticism and its legacy, mainly evident in Symbolism and Surrealism." We found the exhibit really interesting, it had some truly disturbing pieces. I very much love Goya's work from the Prado so it was great to see some more of his work here. They also had a great painting of the ocean that when you look closely you could see dead-looking people looking to grab you. I saw photos at the gift store and the people are far more obvious but in person it was eerily disturbing. We also briefly viewed the Modern art area which had a Picasso (love it!) and some Renoir and Monet.

After the art museum, the fatigue was catching up with us and we decided to head back to the airport. On the way back we saw the Main Tower and decided to check it out. This super fast elevator that reaches speeds over 15km/h took us to the 56th floor, the 4th highest skyscraper in Frankfurt. You can see all around and we got some great shots... although it was chilly up there.

On the walk back to the train station, Sue mentioned that she was hungry and that perhaps we should eat before we go to the airport. I spotted a running sushi place and suggested we try it. So we chowed down on yummy sushi plates as they zoomed by (Anna, not as good as Copenhagen but very tasty!) We had this very interesting salad that (to us) obviously had some sort of seafood in it. We asked on the the servers and she couldn't think of the english word so she started to describe it. Turns out it's Octopus! It was very tasty.

We then headed back to the airport to wait out the rest of the time before our flight.

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