Today was another day trip.

This time, we were off to the city of Frankfurt about 90km and 1 hour by train to the north.

A special toaster

It was another early morning as we were up by 7:45.

Last night we purchased tickets for the hostel’s €8 breakfast buffet this morning and they even put aside some gluten free bread for me.

Now, the buffet itself was kind of lame.

It was a vegetarian buffet so there was alot of cheeses, vegetables and jams and breads and that’s pretty much it.

Honestly, if I had known that was all the buffet entailed, I would have passed but, oh well, here we were.

And my guy did indeed present me my own little package of gluten free bread.

And a toaster.

Not just any toaster though.   It was a gluten free only toaster.

Yup, they had a toaster put aside for only gluten free bread so there’s no cross contamination of bread crumbs from other breads onto mine.

Pretty thoughtful if you ask me.

So, yeah, it was an alright breakfast but it was a pretty light meal.

At 10am we were on our way to Frankfurt…

Hello Frankfurt!

Just over an hour later we had arrived in Frankfurt.

It was just before 11:30 and we had 5 whopping hours here in the city.

Normally for a day trip a couple, maybe three hours is just the right amount of time to be in the city.

Initially we were going to meet a couple of Shawn’s friends here for lunch which is why I planned out extra time here in Frankfurt.

Plans changed and we’ll be meeting them tomorrow night instead in Heidelberg.

So, we had extra time here in Frankfurt and, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t overly excited about being in a big industrial city for this amount of time.

I tried desperately to search for something, anything to do for a couple of hours in the city.

Football matches, operas, a play, something…

But, nothing came up.   No events going on this Sunday.

Oh well, we’ll just make do and figure it out.

We started by walking up from the train station towards the Old Town part of the city.

Movie detour

Along the way to the Old Town is the Main Tower which offers you a 360 degree panoramic view of the city below.

Now getting there was a bit of a maze since the street it was on was partly blocked off for the filming of a movie.

We got to the intersection ready to turn down the street a couple of blocks to the tower only to be whisked back to the corner by a PA for the filming.

Of course everything about filming is always so secretive so the only info I could glean from the PA was that it was a US film being made.

Oh, and the licence plates on the cars being used in the filming all had “United States” licence plates, if that’s a thing.

And the production crew were all wearing safety jackets with “Friendz” written on them which I guess is the code word for the production.

Anyway, we finally got tired of just waiting and traced back our steps to a prior block and looped around to the tower from the other direction.

A view from above

Entry to the 200m tower is €9 ($14) and it did indeed give us great views of the bustling city below.

I guess going up viewing towers is probably the most touristy thing I do while I travel but it’s cool to see the different city layouts and building architectures down below.

After about 15 minutes we were heading back down to street level.

Retracing steps

I have a little confession to make – this isn’t my first time to Frankfurt.

At the beginning of my Benelux Trip last year I had an impromptu 7 hour layover in Frankfurt.

Taking off time to go through customs and the time needed to checkin for my ongoing flight, I had a few hours free to explore Frankfurt during the afternoon.

So, with that in mind, I had taken the time to mark out places I visited last year including where I had gone to lunch.

As we approached the Old Town, we started retracing the steps I had done last year and, I gotta admit, it was kind of cool revisiting the city and remembering little things I did that afternoon.

The coolest thing though was definitely going back to the little German restaurant I had lunch at last year and doing it again.

We entered the restaurant and I even sat at the exact same stool I sat in last year as I ate my meal at the bar countertop.

This time around after ordering at the bar we were given a table that had opened up.

As for lunch, well, I ordered the same thing I did last year – sausage with potato and sauerkraut.

Aside from maybe schnitzel, there’s no plate more German than that!

Free Walking Tour

By the time we were done lunch it was nearing 2pm and, wouldn’t you know, there was a walking tour starting up at 2:00.

Now, I’m really trying not to do as many walking tours this time around especially back to back ones because, frankly, they can get exhausting.

I did a few back to back last year during my time in the Netherlands and Belgium and by the end I was tuned out and just walking around not listening to the guide.

Traveling is all about pacing.

So, with that in mind, I hadn’t originally planned on doing a walking tour here in Frankfurt but, honestly, it was a great way to kill the last two hours here in the city before we had to catch our 4:30 train.

We met in the over touristy area of town, Romerberg, and our tour guide Juan took us away on a two hour adventure through the city.

So, I don’t know if you know this, but the blogs I write after walking tours are long and take a long time to write.   I try to incorporate as many stories that I heard along the way as I can.

Anyway, remember how I said sometimes I’ll just kind of walk around and tune out my guide?

Yeah, well, this was one of those times.

It’s not a reflection at all on my guide or the tour.   He was great and he took us to a bunch of places here in the Old Town.

I just was tuned out.   Today I was more interested in just taking some cool photos of things I saw and just walk around the city with the group.

And with that, it was time to catch our train and head back to Heidelberg.

A dinner adventure

By the time we had returned to the hostel it was 5:30.

We actually stopped by a different restaurant last night after dinner to make a reservation for tonight at 7pm.

When we were making the reservation I remember thinking “wow, it’s Saturday night and the place is empty, do we even need to make a reso for a Sunday?”

With that thought still ringing in my head, I asked Shawn if it was okay if we went out for dinner later at 8 or 8:30 since I just wanted to veg for a bit and lie in bed for awhile.

I figured we didn’t really need the reso and could just show up and be sat whenever we decided to eat.

Besides, if by some off chance we couldn’t get a table, we could always go back to the place we went to last night which also was empty on a Saturday night.

So, I guess you know where this is going…

Yeah, we showed up at the restaurant at 8:30, a full hour and a half after our reservation, and the restaurant was full.

What the actual f*ck?

How?

It’s Sunday!   The place was empty on a Saturday yesterday!   Make it make sense!

Well, no worries.   Like I said, Plan B was to go back to where we ate last night.

We entered the restaurant to find our server from last night.   The place had a few tables sat but there was definitely room for us.

Table for two please.

That’s when we found out the kitchen closes early on Sunday nights for cleaning.

Oh, come on!

Are we really going through this little dinner merry-go-round again?

Well, this is totally on me.   I messed up.   I wanted to lie in bed an extra hour and it came back to bite us in the butt.

I felt bad for Shawn as I did with Nathan last year since it’s not as simple as just stopping by another restaurant across the street.

With my gluten allergy my choice of restaurants is smaller and more spread apart.

And sometimes they close early to clean!

So, we walked back towards the Old Town where we had seen quite a few restaurants last night.

There was nothing specifically gluten free but I figured we’d just find a random restaurant offering German food and I’d just figure out on my own what I could and couldn’t have.

Gluten free schnitzel!

We passed by Hotel Ritter and looked inside the window at people eating.

Well, at least they’re still serving food so that’s a good start.

After a quick glance at the menu board outside we entered and sat down at a table.

As I glanced through the menu looking for either a pork or chicken dish (unbreaded, of course), my attention was drawn to a phrase on the bottom of the page listing all the schnitzel dishes.

The words “Glutenfrei +€3.00” was right there in print.

Could it be?   Could I actually get a schnitzel breaded in gluten free flour for €3 extra?

This place wasn’t even mentioned on my “Find me GF” app that I use to find gluten free food while I travel.

Sure enough our waitress who also just happens to be celiac told me that I could, indeed, get a gluten free schnitzel.

I mean, you could literally imagine how happy I was.

A place we had just stumbled upon because we couldn’t eat at the other two places just happened to have the much coveted German dish for us celiacs – the holy grail of gluten free schnitzel!

A magical meal to be sure.   I had a glass of rosé as well and finished off my meal with a nice peach malba dessert.

After dinner was done and we were back at our hostel it was 10:30.

Now, normally, this is when I just go to bed and end the blog.

Normally…

An “early” Canucks game

Well, wouldn’t you know it.   The Canucks were playing an afternoon game today in Nashville.

The game started at 2pm PST which is 11pm in Germany.

Like I said, it was an “early” game.

I mean, as opposed to the 4am games they played earlier in the week, 11pm is super early.

So, despite usually not staying up past midnight while I travel, I made an exception tonight.

It was game 4 with the Canucks leading the series 2-1.

Could they win tonight and put a hammerlock on the series at 3-1 or would Nashville tie the series at 2-2?

Early on it looked promising for the Canucks as they took an early 1-0 lead on their first shot.

And then Nashville scored.

And again.

And again.

Sigh.

Early in the third we were trailing 3-1.

Hope was fading.

The time wound down.

4 minutes left.   Still down 3-1.

Wow, I can’t believe I stayed up til 2am to watch this.

And then a funny thing happened.

We scored with just over 3 minutes left.

And then the Predators hit the post on an empty net.

And then…

The Canucks…

Tied the game with 8 seconds left!

Oh my God!

I mean, on the one hand, I was tired and really wanted to go to bed but on the other hand, overtime baby!

Thankfully the overtime only lasted just over a minute as the Canucks completed the inconceivable comeback to win the game and take a stranglehold in the series.

Now, that’s how you end a day in Germany!