Day two in Frankfurt

Earlier today, while I was eating lunch, I was watching the French Open. That is, I was watching the highlights, since the actual matches were in the midst of a rain delay. It was only later that I remembered that I'm a lot closer to Paris now than I was a week ago. And so now, at 18:26, I'm realizing that the dark storm clouds off in the west might actually be an indication of a rainy evening. And a stormy departure tomorrow....

Fortunately it was good weather this morning when I went out wandering. The jet lag hasn't been too bad, which is to mean that I went to bed at 9:30 last night and woke up at 2:30 in the morning. Hey, that's five hours of sleep! Of course, it took another hour before I was able to even drift off again, and then it was off and on until I finally got up for breakfast around 7:30. My hotel, in addition to being a great location for walking around, has a "hot breakfast" which was included in the reservation, and it had the international edition of the US Today, which meant I could read all the news that I had heard about at 3am when watching CNN. I did get the baseball box scores though, which was not covered on CNN. Gee, go figure. :)

After breakfast, I took the U-Bahn (which I am now much better at navigating) to the Römerberg area of Frankfurt. It's the city hall square. From there I wandered through the old parts of Frankfurt, much of which had been destroyed in 1944 and then rebuilt in the subsequent years, mostly looking just as they had before the bombings. As I walked further west, getting closer to the commerce areas, things start looking much more modern. I managed to stumble upon the European Central Bank, the headquarters of all things Euro. The main reason I noticed it is that there were reporters, tv cameras, and lots of police. I have no idea if this was the regular noon-time setup for news reports, or if there was some sort of excitement going on, but that's when I saw this. (Sorry, blogger isn't letting me post the picture right now...it's not mine anyways, so I'll replace it with my own when I get home...) It's a huge, giant Euro symbol. Cool. (Update: Duh, June 1st was the ten-year anniversary of the euro...that's why there were so many people around...)

There is a fantastic walking path along both sides of the river here. There are lots of walkers, roller bladers, bikers, and more. Yesterday I walked along at 5:30, and it seemed that everyone had left work and gone down to the river to meet up with their friends and have a picnic in the grass (there is no law here, apparently, against open bottles in public...). Later I discovered that there was some sort of concert going on down the way, but I never did figure out who was performing (although i did find out that Bon Jovi is performing tomorrow night).

I've made an important and useful discovery today, one which anyone planning a visit to Frankfurt at some point may want to keep in mind -- most museums (at least, all the ones I passed by) are closed on Mondays. Made for a quick morning of sight-seeing. Oh, and Frankfurt really doesn't seem to be much of a touristy town. Once you've seen the old city center and some of the commerce area, you've pretty much seen everything. I'm sure I missed something, but I can't figure out what....

Tomorrow I fly to Dubai, and will arrive at some point late at night (not that time zones matter anymore, I have no idea which one I'm in, or which one my sleep cycle is in). It's supposed to be at least 105 degrees there, so I think I'll go enjoy the brief rain shower that just started here....might be my last until I return to Germany in another week. :)