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Last night I was finally able to get a full night's sleep, mainly because our planned tour didn't start until mid-afternoon. I was able to churn through some photo sorting after I woke up at about 9 o'clock. Gaby, Harmjan and the rest of the family only ever get to sleep in on Sundays, so we didn't have breakfast until about 11. We had a typical large breakfast, which consisted of breads, cheeses, meats, spreads, yoghurt and the like. After eating so much last night, none of us was very hungry.
Gaby and Harmjan are part of a parents' association, and today they had organised a tour around some of the more famous churches in Frankfurt's Altstadt, or Old Town. Our first stop on the tour was the Römer, which is the central part of the Altstadt, containing the Rathaus (City Hall) and the Alter Nikolaikirche, and is full of beautiful houses. For nearly a millenium, caesars would be crowned at the nearby Frankfurter Dom and be transported to the Rathaus, where they would have a celebratory feast. During World War II the entire town was bombed and only the Alter Nikolaikirche and one of the many houses remained standing:
On our way to the second church we also passed Paulskirche, which was once an official government meeting point, and is now a place where government visitors, such as the President of the United States, first come to when visiting Frankfurt. Here are some of the other churches we visited:
The rest of the churches on the tour
Finally we arrived at the Frankfurter Dom, which is the most famous and most frequented church in Frankfurt. It's very red on the outside, and is the place I mentioned above where the caesars were crowned from 800 to 1800. The clock tower is 66 metres tall, and has only recently re-opened to the public after a 20-year closure. The narrow stairwell goes around and around and has 328 steps. It makes you very dizzy very quickly, but once you get to the top the views of Frankfurt are magnificent. You can see the River Main on one side of the tower and the city centre on the other:
View of the Main and the new town from the Domturm
I spent plenty of time up the tower, and when we went down the three of us went to Café Mozart, where we had a typical German afternoon tea of absolutely enormous slices of cake. After a grapefruit juice and chocolate cake later, we headed for the Mainturm (Main Tower). The Mainturm has an open observation deck which makes the Dom's clock tower look like a toy. From the tower you can see all the way to the mountains some 100 kilometres away, as well as to the airport and to Hanau, which is the next town to the east:
After we came down the Main Tower, we then saw a couple more attractions, including Frankfurt local Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's house, before heading back home, where Gaby made a delicious spinach- and tomato-based lasagne for dinner.
That's all for today. Tomorrow I'm on my second high-speed train, arriving in Berlin just in time to watch the second half of Germany's first World Cup match. I'm told that it's a fantastic spectacle at the main viewing area in Berlin.
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