On to Germany

On Saturday, July 18th, we said good-bye to Walter and Helen and farewell to Switzerland.  We left in the morning on a train from Aarau to Basel, on the German border.  We had an hour's wait there, and then boarded a train to Frankfurt.

By late afternoon we had arrived in Frankfurt.

We stayed at the same hotel that I stayed at a couple of years ago when I was in Frankfurt.  It's a convenient place just across the street from the train station.  After we were settled into our room, we decided to take a walk to the Old Town for a German dinner.  A couple blocks from the hotel is the Main River, and a walk of about 20 minutes along the riverfront promenade will take you to the Old Town.  However, it took us longer than that because Frankfurt was holding its Gay Pride celebration, and we had to make our way through the crowds.

 

If you look at the background, you can see that the festivities were being held on both banks of the river.

We made our way to the plaza by the city hall in the city's small Old Town.  The Old Town was destroyed in World War II, and a small section was reconstructed the way it was before the war.

Just off the plaza is a restaurant called Schwarzer Stern.  I had eaten there the last time I was in Frankfurt, and I liked the food and the atmosphere.  So we returned for our last dinner of the trip.

I ordered bratwurst with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, and a delicious apple strudel for dessert.

It rained a bit while we were eating, but fortunately the rain had stopped by the time we were finished.  We took a different route back to the hotel to avoid the crowds at the Pride Festival.  The next day was our flight home to Mexico City.