Normandy Adventures: First day (and last city): Frankfurt!

Norman:

Today we headed to our last destination of our journey: Frankfurt! Frankfurt is best known as the banking city of Germany, so I didn't expect it to be as "hip" as Berlin or as "German" as our experience in Munich. This was also one city that I wasn't able to meet up with any of my German friends so we were left to fend for ourselves when faced with German food menus and some subway stations.

After a fairly brief train ride (only about two hours), we arrived at Frankfurt and took the subway to the city. This was one place where we actually stayed in a hotel and after so many AirBnBs, it was quite nice to have a nice clean room, with a flexible check-in time and room service to clean and provide new towels every day. We dropped off our stuff and our plans were to check out nearby landmarks and may be do some last-chance shopping, since tomorrow (Sunday) all stores are closed (dammit Germany!)

Our first destination was the Romer (which is a set of medieval buildings in a square and also where the City Hall is located). On the walk there, we were lucky enough to find a food festival with a bunch of international foods being offered. From Greek, to Malaysian, to Indian, there were almost too many options. In addition, there were cultural shows and tourism promotions for these countries. We ended up eating some Greek souvlaki, Malaysian beef balls and Indonesian curry-puffs. We also found an old-style steam engine that actually carried passengers and only actually comes once a month!

Mandy saved me from the speeding locomotive just in the nick of time

Soooo many people at the international food festival and traditional clothes from respective countries

Mmm souvlaki with extra tzatziki sauce

Mmm currypuffs straight out of the fryer

Beef balls with spicy sauce (iron bridge in the background)

Afterwards, we headed a little north and checked out the Romer. The architecture was quite distinctive compared to all the other high-rises in Frankfurt and it was a really neat little square. However, the sheer number of people that were spilling over from the food festival made it difficult to navigate. We continued north to check out the Zeil shopping street. Given that the Germans only have Saturday to go shopping since everything is closed on Sunday, the streets and malls were crowded in full force. It felt like boxing day in Germany, except sales weren't as good and we didn't end up buying anything.

Cool facade in the Romer architecture

After walking down Zeil, we headed towards the Dom cathedral, which is one classical building that stands atop the many skyscrapers in Frankfurt's landscape. We took a few quick photos and continued exploring the city. Interestingly, while we were walking around Frankfurt, we saw a bunch of Chinese shopping tourists going crazy and Zwilling Henckels kitchen store. There were people that literally bought an entire kitchen's worth of pots, pans, knives, and cutlery. $$$$$$$$$

Dom cathedral from the inside (pretty sure we snuck in after it closed)

Dom cathedral (exterior)

While we were exploring the city, we missed out on some luxury shopping malls since everything closed at 6:00 pm. However the trek wasn't in vain; as we explored the new area we walked by the opera house and found a SECOND food festival. We stopped by there to have some mediocre paella (I was craving good paella since my parents recently visited Spain) and proceeded to head towards Haagen Daz for some dessert. Mandy had a cherry waffle with ice cream and I just had nice and simple Merlot, while watching the nail-biting football game of Brazil vs. Chile. To end off the night, we went to a grocery store to pick up some snacks and I had a second dinner with some doner.