Europe Tour 2024 (Series Part 2)
Sharing my experience with the trip to seven countries in Europe. (Part 2 of the Series)
(Part 2 of a Series)
Day 1 of the tour
Technically, I consider this as "Day 1.5" since Day 1 is spent in transit. After leaving home at around 1:30pm and taking off at around 7:00pm of Manila's Wednesday, we arrived at our hotel at around 7:00am of Frankfurt's Thursday. So, yeah... we "time travelled" and lost a whole day in transit. For me, though, it was worth it.
We arrived to a cold and rainy Frankfurt, with temperature recorded at 5°C. It was a chilly morning and I got a little bit wet trying to look for our bus. When we arrived at the hotel 45 minutes later and waited for a bit to be able to check in. We weren't able to get into the room immediately because check-in time is at 2:00pm that afternoon.
The tour package listed the Frankfurt arrival time as a free day, and DK planned a DIY city tour. It was raining, so we were like "YOLO", got our waterproof jackets, left our luggage at the hotel (as we've been directed to do so), and stepped out into the cold, rainy streets of Frankfurt.
By the way, our hotel is here:
I also took a photo of the street sign, because I don't want to get lost.
And it seems that DK is enjoying herself so much already, despite the rain and the drizzle that didn't seem to stop.
Before stepping out though, I mustered the courage to ask the hotel receptionist of what food she'd recommend for first timers like us. I recall that she mentioned the schnitzel but it's only available at lunch and it was too early. She added that we'll find bakeries in the area which also serve coffee. Guess what, surprise, surprise: she's 1000% correct.
We chanced upon this local bakery and true enough, they also serve coffee. We got us some croissant sandwiches and two coffee klein. (I later found out that coffee klein is plain black coffee with almost espresso-like quality.)
Good thing I survived the interaction with the kind lady at the store. I asked "English okay?" but she answered "Nein" so we shifted to the point method of buying. We got the sandwiches because they're the ones that looked familiar (smoked salmon and salami) because of this method. And the bread was so GOOD~ They were so good that I just to try the pretzel and a plain croissant.
Powered by bread and coffee, we proceeded with our quest to reach Frankfurt Am Main and Römerberg. At this point we're still confused with Frankfurt's train system, and we realized that we didn't do any research about it in advance, so we walked... and walked... and walked.
We saw both classic and modern architecture. I can't remember that path we took.
And thanks to the power of the Internet, we were able to reach our destination.
We powered through the rain and took some photos despite being wet and our phones getting wet.
As said, the town square is really picturesque. The rain left me imagining how this would look like in sunny weather and during the sunset.
I still enjoyed the sight though, since I'm seeing sights I've only seen in the movies. And being in the townsquare gave me a feeling of stepping back in time.
DK decided "enough of the rain" and bought an umbrella. We were told later on that German umbrellas are one of the most durable in the world, and it's a worthwhile purchase. For me, I found one of these coin souvenir machines and I just had to get one.
However, despite the newly-bought German super umbrella, DK and I decided that enough is enough because of the non-stop rain. It wasn't stormy, but the rain just kept on going.
We just made one last stop at Paulsplatz to take a photo of these weird-looking trees...
Then we made our way back to the hotel to get some much needed rest.
And that ends Day 1.5 of our Europe tour. :)
This is part 2 of Raisondetroy's Europe Tour 2024 series. Missed part 1? Don't worry, here's the link: EuropenTour 2024, Part 1