Frankfurt trip

We took a quick trip to Frankfurt last weekend, it was a neat city to see...it reminded us of Seattle a bit other than it was flat. Evie found out her raincoat isn't waterproof, now what's the sense in that?!

They call Frankfurt's skyline a German Manhattan, I didn't take the picture above, we must not have gone to the right place to get this view of the city.

It rained on us a good portion of the weekend (see the above reference we make to Seattle), but it cleared up long enough to get a few pictures with blue skies

Saint Bartholomeus' Cathedral was by far our favorite site. This church was built in the 14th and 15th centuries, and it was mostly spared when the city was destroyed during WWII. Frankfurt's "old" buildings were rebuilt in the 1950s.

The Cathedral area after WWII

Frankfurt is a major financial district

Römer - the old town hall and square

From across the river we thought this was riverside cafes, we found out it was really just a flea market with an amazing amount of junk

The city seemed very empty for a Saturday.

We wandered around the suggested tourist routes and ended up here and decided to find a place to eat.

This is the place we decided to try for lunch, looked kinda scary,

but we were getting pretty hungry.

We were relieved to find that inside it was cozy and there
were actually quite a few people there.

On the way out we exited the front door...
and the food was really great - sausages, sour kraut, etc.

Some other cool buildings we saw

We apparently visited on a very controversial weekend. Saturday night there were police dressed in riot gear everywhere. We asked one of them what was going on and she said that that people were demonstrating against the ball that night (people had been throwing rocks and chairs at the police who were guarding the people going into the opera house). The ball is held every year at the opera house and is very expensive and the taxpayers have tired of paying for it. Other than police squadrons marching through the city and police vehicles and a helicopter it was very calm. Wes did see an arrest taking place, but no violence.

There is a Greek verse from one of Homer's Iliads spanned across a walking bridge, saying: "ΠΛΕΩΝ ΕΠΙ ΟΙΝΟΠΑ ΠΟΝΤΟΝ ΕΠ ΑΛΛΟΘΡΟΟΥΣ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΥΣ", which translates into something like 'sailing across wine colored seas towards people of different tongues' - but the banner is not old, it is from one of the museum festivals. It looks cool anyway.

A view across the river