Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Germany Trip Day 1

After almost 30 hour of being awake (with a tiny nap on the plane somewhere over the Atlantic) we have completed our first day in Germany! Thankfully, our flights to get here were uneventful and smooth.

This was in SLC airport where we are awake, fresh and ready to go.

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We arrived in Frankfurt around 9:30 am and hung around until Jeff and Alison’s plane landed about an hour later. We picked up our rental van and headed off to our hotel to drop off luggage and get cleaned up.

Our first stop was the Frankfurt Temple. Unfortunately, it’s under reconstruction so pictures of it aren’t that amazing. The entire area surrounding the temple is under construction as well. They are getting a new meeting house, new apartments and a really nice construction worker came over to us and explained a few changes they were making inside the temple. Right now, both the Freiberg and Frankfurt temples are closed so the Saints here have to travel to the Netherlands, Switzerland or Denmark if they want to go.

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The sky was cloudy and gray but still a pretty backdrop to take pictures.

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This is the walkway right next to the temple (temple is to the left) that walks up past the old apartments (first building on the right) and further up is the Temple President’s residence and the old meeting house.

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The temple under construction.

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After visiting the temple we headed to the center of Frankfurt, a square called Romerberg. We crossed over Main River and had a beautiful view of St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral, which was also under renovation so we couldn’t go inside or get super close.

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There were these beautiful trees along the river that Alison and I both noticed. Alison said the trunks looked painted and had a camouflage look to them. The picture don’t do them justice.

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We crossed over the Main River on the Eisenbruke. This was a pedestrian only bridge that had the ‘love locks’ all over them. It looked awesome. 

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Romberberg square was just what I would have imagined an old German town to look like. This was the place where Frankfurt started back in the 12th Century.

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What would a town square be without an old church? Mark looks super thrilled that I took his picture.

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Lady Justice was also in the square, but she was without her usual blindfold. 

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Outside this restaurant was a huge bamboo sculpture. So cool.

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We finished exploring Romerberg square and headed back to the car so we could head back to the hotel and find some dinner. At this point we were so tired from lack of sleep. We settled on a cute little restaurant around the corner of the hotel we could walk to.

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All four of us had pork schnitzel which for some reason translates to ‘escalope’ in English, which is actually a French word for a similar dish in France. Betcha didn’t know that, huh? I had mine with mushroom sauce and fresh mushrooms. So good. Mark’s was smothered in ridiculous amounts of onions.

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Our side dish was spatzle, which is like a dumpling but in noodle-shape form. Our meal also included a green salad but poor Mark had to pass his over to me to eat since they automatically put ranch dressing on it.

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Just outside the restaurant was this cool tree person thing.

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We decided to take a quick look at a small shopping center across the street from our hotel on the way back from dinner. Mark saw a part of a sign that said ‘Danish’ so we thought we’d get lucky and find a pastry/Danish store. Yeah, it wasn’t. It was a mattress store. But we did find a store which was the equivalent to a dollar store. There were some cheap 1 euro items but they also had cheap clothes. I found this sweatshirt…

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I thought about buying it but thought buying a U.S. sweatshirt in Germany was a waste of money.

We had a great first day in Deutschland, with way more fun and excitement left to come.  It’s now 7:30 pm and we are off to bed. Don’t judge. We’ve been up forever.

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