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July 24, 2015
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
Actually, it may be a little later than that because we've been so busy we haven't had time to post this!
After traveling by train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, Germany we have been very busy. On Saturday, we were greeted at the train depot in Frankfurt by our German exchange student, Tina and her family. It was so good to see her again and to see familiar faces. They gathered us up and took us for a mini-tour around the city before heading to their condo. After we got settled, they took us to an authentic German restaurant, Adolf Wagner. It is very famous in Frankfurt where many celebrities have eaten. We ordered Weinersnitzel with mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and apfelwein. It was soooo good! To make our meal even more memorable, a German singing club was in our dining room at the same time. Every once in a while, they would break out the accordians and entertain us with German folk songs. We had a hand-clapping, toe-tapping good time!
Wolfgang Schlager, a friend of ours in the states, had made arrangements for us to meet up with a steamboater he knows in the Frankfurt area. When Josef first heard that we were coming to visit, he had us scheduled to visit for two days! We had to decline his hospitality because we just didn't have that much time in Germany. We explained that our trip was to visit Tina, so in order to make sure we could get together, he scaled it down to a half day. Steven & Tina drove us to meet him and he was so kind to take all of us on a tour of the castle in his small Bavarian village of Aschaffenburg. After the tour, we went to a historic brewery where we had a very nice lunch. Then he wasn't done because he arranged for us to take a steamboat ride on the River Main with another steamer, Peter & his wife. What a wonderful day we had steaming on the Main, drinking local beer and homemade cupcakes that his wife had made.
After our day adventure, we took Tina and her family out to another famous place in Frankfurt called Lohrberg Schenke, located on top of a hill overlooking the city. We had to park the car about a quarter of a mile and walk through a park full of apple trees. I had roasted chicken with vegetables that night.
We took it easy the next day so we could get caught up with laundry and rest our weary feet. Steven and Tina's condo is on the third floor of the building and the laundry room was located in the basement so there was a lot of stair climbing. We have found out that the Europeans do a lot of walking and we are not used to that! Up to this point, I believe we have walked more on this trip than we have for the entire year!
We said our good-bye's to Tina and her family and boarded the train for Paris on Tuesday. It was a four-hour train ride even though we were traveling at 200 miles per hour for part of the trip. When we arrived, our driver was waiting for us to take us to our hotel. That was our first experience with Paris traffic. The drivers are very aggressive and think nothing of forcing themselves through traffic with a very elaborate game of "Chicken". How they don't have more accidents is beyond us! Paris is very congested and so we have done most of our sightseeing by foot. We have visited the Eiffel Tower, the Rue Cler (open market place), the Louvre, the Orsay Museum and we took a sightseeing cruise on the River Seine. Dave has posted lots of pictures on Facebook.
It was quite an experience visiting the Castle in Versailles. It was crowded and even with our Paris Pass we had to wait in line for nearly an hour. It's hard to see in this tiny photo, but the line in front of us doubles back to our right and then doubles back again before reaching the palace. And we were early! Later, we could see at least ten lines of people waiting in that maze. I don't think I have ever seen so many Asians who tend to crowd people when we're all occupying the same space. I've just learned to be more aggressive and push back! And I'm bigger than they are! Versailles was a very beautiful place and we got the idea how the upper class (royalty) lived during the 17th Century. After spending the day there we were glad to get back to hotel. I have to brag just a little here. Dave doesn't like to go anywhere where he doesn't know the way and how he's going to get back. I don't mind a little adventure. So after taking a very expensive taxi ride from Paris to Versailles, I told him we were going to take the much cheaper train back to town. So, I stopped people on the street and managed to find the train station and a helpful ticket vendor who got us on the right train. I keep telling Dave - all we have to do is ask!
After we rested from our Versailles expedition, we headed for the Pont Des Artes next to the Louvre where we knew Dave's cousin Ruairidh Macleod was going to be playing the bagpipes. Sure enough, we could hear him before we saw him. It was fun watching him play and watching people reacting to him. After he finished, we all went out to grab some dinner in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank. We had a nice meal and had an hour to get to know Ruairidh. We're going to be going to his home town of Applecross in Scotland when we get to that part of the world. His mother has graciously offered a place for us to stay for a couple of days in that remote part of the country. There's a chance that he'll be back from his travels and we'll get a chance to re-connect at that time.
We will be in Paris for the weekend and then leave by train on Tuesday for Normandy. Since you already know this entry is late, you know that I'm having a problem staying on schedule with my journal while traveling and sightseeing. There just isn't enough time! And when there is - we're exhausted! I will try to post more as time allows. The internet problems that I talked about last week are still with us, but we're managing to patch things together enough to post the journal.
