A surprisingly good night’s sleep – take that, jet lag!
A fabulous Breakfast here at the Schloss (they capitalize all nouns in German, thanks for that tip, Duolingo – but it’s very distracting so I won’t continue that here.) You can’t beat the Germans for hotel breakfasts, they must be bitterly disappointed with what they get served up in NZ.
After that we Ubered in to Frankfurt for a walking tour that we’d pre booked, run by an expat American from Columbus, Ohio. The tour was very highly rated when taken by every tour guide except Dave, who was the chap who took our tour.
He did have a particularly old fashioned style, with mildly sexist and xenophobic jokes which would have brought the house down a couple of decades ago but aren’t so well received nowadays when we’re all so woke. He said he was 67 but he seemed older, quite frail and slow. The four of us being doctors, we quickly decided he had some sort of disease, likely neurological. I’m sure his poorly hidden smoking habit wasn’t helping either. The tour lasted almost four hours so it was quite a marathon. We learned a reasonable amount but not as much as you might expect.
There were Romans here, the river made it a great trading spot, there was something about Charlemagne. The Jews have had it rough in Europe for hundreds of years before Hitler came along. The city had the crap bombed out of it in WW2 but a couple of old tall pointy structures remained. They’ve rebuilt many of the old half timbered Tudor style buildings and they look surprisingly less naff than you’d expect.
We had lunch by the river, more excellent food – yes, there were potatoes and sausages, but there was also lots of fresh vegetables as well.
Simon and I then went back to the schloss for a snooze before dinner. The castle was actually hosting a wedding, we walked past the bride and groom in the foyer. Her dress was a very traditional meringue but all in black. This was the third wedding we’d seen today, as there were two in the town hall when we’d been there (both white, although one was a rather fetching pants suit.)
For dinner we went a to a local place, a very pleasant 20 minutes walk, which would have been faster if google hadn’t lied to us. Another very nice meal sitting in a shop lined square, under a tree. The menu was all in German which was a bit of a shock, I’m guessing we’re a bit out of the tourist loop here, and they were mostly locals eating there. Our hosts also seemed to have latched onto the slow food movement, or slow service at least. It did mean that the ants and other small creepy crawlies gradually began to leave us alone as it got darker and cooler. The local specialty drink is apple wine which I don’t recommend. It’s an unhappy cross between beer and cider. By the end of our meal we were all ready to stumble into bed, so it was unfortunate that this time google tried to get us to cross a park through some locked gates. Eventually we made it home via a golf course, through a hedge and briefly crashing the wedding party. Now in bed and too tired to proof read before posting.