Breakfast, The romer AndThe Palmengarten

Previous page - The Frankfurt Youth Hostel

 

We had such an awful night’s sleep.  How many times have I said that before?  The yahoo’ing was going on everywhere into the wee small hours.  I’m pretty sure a lot of it is football fever.  The second half of the night was spent listening to our hostellers coming home from their late night reveling.  We both woke up feeling grossly tired.  We actually didn’t crawl out of bed until 8 a.m.

 

Breakfast at The youth hostel

When we finally got up to the third floor for breakfast we found it was very busy.  It was hard to find a table to sit at.  Breakfast was a lovely feast.  We chose from cereals, cold meats, cheese, eggs, tomato, cucumber, warm, crisp bread rolls plus toast.  Plus all the trimmings such as butter, milk, yoghurt, jams, fruit juices and a variety of teas.  We ate well.

 

 

 

I spotted some Asian girls who were busily and secretly making up some salad rolls from the breakfast ingredients too.  They had even brought their plastic bags with them to put the salad rolls into.

We set off across the road to the bus station and quickly found the City Tour Hop-On-Hop-Off bus and paid our 15 Euros each for our tickets.  Already the day was warm and our hats were on our heads right from the start.  We travelled around with our commentary head phones on but we weren’t really absorbing much of what was said in the commentary.  We were too tired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hopped off near where we wanted to buy our river cruise tickets for tomorrow.  We got the tickets with no problems.  Most people here speak English which is so handy for us.  We wandered around over the bridges and up little streets just mooching around.  There were ducks and swans on the Main River which was lovely to see. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We looked around the Romer area which really is quite picturesque.  We looked at menus at some of the cafes and restaurants as it was getting near lunch time.  We came to the conclusion that prices were higher in this very tourist orientated area so we moved on a bit.  We ended up buying salad rolls and a cake each which was very nice and we sat out under umbrellas eating it all as slowly as we could.  We are at the stage where we are killing time waiting to go home.  Whilst there we came across another Australian couple so we spent about 20 minutes chatting to them.

 

 

 

When we finished eating we got back on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus and went to the Palmengarten.  It is a large area where you can walk amongst a beautiful range of plants. 

Particularly emphasized in the gardens are the palm trees and hot houses.  The temperature was so hot that we didn’t stay long in any of the hot houses.  We went into the glass building that houses sub arctic plants but it was quite warm in there too. 

Air conditioning is not a big thing here in Germany.  I don’t know how the sub arctic plants will fare if this hot weather keeps up as is forecast. 

In the Palmengarten there was even an orchestra playing so we sat and listened to beautiful music too.

 

 

When we had enough we wandered back out to where the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus would pick us up. 

We knew the four o’clock bus was due in about 10 minutes so we aimed to be climbing on board it fairly quickly.  Well the four o’clock bus never showed up, then the 4:30 bus never arrived either.

 

 

We decided to wait for the five o’clock bus which we knew would be the last one.  The five o’clock bus actually arrived on time but refused to stop for us.  The driver indicated with his hand that he was not stopping.  Boy  were we mad!  It had been stinking hot waiting for the bus for just over an hour and to think we then had to walk all the way back to the hostel. 

Luckily Ian has a good sense of direction and we made it back to the Youth Hostel on foot.  I intend giving the bus company a piece of my mind when we can catch up with them. 

It was a hot walk back to the hostel so we had a rest for an hour and then set off looking for our dinner. 

We walked up and down Kaiserstrasse but nothing really took our eye.  We finished up eating at a Lebanese café and sat outside to maximize any cool air.

 

Of course we had to have smokers come and sit nearby.  We can’t stand cigarette smoking at the best of times, let alone when we are trying to enjoy our meal.  We both had very nice meals for 10 Euros each.  That was half the price of a meal in similar restaurant on the opposite side of the road from where we ate.

I had been promising myself a Crème Brulee ice cream since yesterday so, after dinner,  we wandered on further down Kaiserstrasse and bought an ice cream each.  A slow wander took us back to the hostel. When we got back there was an ambulance down in the street and ambulance men inside the hostel. We saw someone being helped down the stairs by his mates. We wondered what was going on.

It’s now time for bed.  We are packed and ready to go early tomorrow morning.  We have to be ready for breakfast when it starts at 7 a.m.  Then we’ll have a brisk walk down to the river where the cruise boats moor.  Well that is the intention anyway!

 

Next page - A cruise on the Main River

 

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