Frankly beautiful...

Today we packed everyone into the our urban assault craft and hightailed it up to Frankfurt, an hour or so North of Heidelberg.We've been here 9 months but have only made it up there for airport runs. As usual, we made absolutely no plans and did virtually no research. When we got in the van, we entered "Frankfurt - Altstatd" in Poposuda (our navigation system) and were off like flash, hoping for the best. The trip there seemed really quick and we had no trouble parking in the street near Frankfurt Cathedral. We had a quick cup of Joe/hot chocolate to warm the bones and then went walking around. The area around the Main river is absolutely gorgeous. Frankfurt is a large, modern city that still has some typical German charm. My understanding is that is was bombed into the Stone Age during WWII. It has recovered quite nicely. I prefer these cities on Saturdays as there's a lot of movement; Sundays are relatively dead.

Frankfurt Cathedral is packed with beautiful art and statuary. I could have stayed there all morning, but the river area looked inviting as well. The big hit with the kids on the river were the enormous swans. We bought a super sized pretzel that the kids fed to these huge fowl and their little duck cousins.
After walking around for a couple of hours, we had lunch at a Biergarten literally in the shadow of the cathedral. I then headed out on my own for a few minutes to take a few pictures (of course) and we headed back. We'll have some guests from Brazil later this month and will head back sans kids to check out some of the museums. My guess is you could explore Frankfurt for months.

After hanging around at the ranch for a few, B and I decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants in the area. We first went to Glashaus when we were in temporary housing in Bad Schönborn. The place is still really nice and, much to B's delight, mussels are back in season. Not sure what their secret is, but the mussels at this place are from another planet (and in a good way).

Tomorrow there's a fall party at Sophia's school. I'll let you know how it goes.