Friday, May 13 - arrival in Frankfurt

Friday, May 13
It was interesting to see the sunrise above the clouds as we headed across the Atlantic Ocean. Don’t know when it became Friday technically but I’m sure it was somewhere along the way. Breakfast was served about an hour before we landed – croissant, yogurt, orange juice. We could see the Irish and British countryside by this time, and landed at London Heathrow about 9 a.m. local time. Must confess to a faux pas – thought the blankets and pillows were complimentary and disposable, so told Steve we might as well take ours, at least the blankets, because they were just going to throw them away anyway. Not sure where that idea popped into my head as we noticed that night at the hotel that there were tags attached that said “Property of American Airlines. Please do not remove from aircraft.” Oops.
At Heathrow, we had to change terminals, from terminal 3 to terminal 5. That involved a shuttle bus and our only chance to technically be on British soil other than an airport terminal. Once at terminal 5, we had to go through security again. Had to send my bag of electronics through again but it went ok.
Next stop was the shops – I really wanted to get a William and Kate souvenir as the wedding was just two weeks ago. Ended up with three souvenirs – two commemorative tins and a commemorative wedding magazine. One tin had Walker shortbread in it, the other has tea. Fun to see the British foods and expressions again after two years away. Told Steve we should plan on some London time next trip…if I’d planned this a bit better maybe our layover could have been long enough for a short tour of London. Oh well.
Another case of hurry up and wait – we ate shortbread, drank coke/diet coke, people watched (me) and slept (Steve.) Our gate was finally announced and we made the (thankfully) short distance to the gate. We were again allowed to pre-board because of Steve’s cane, and settled in for an hour’s flight to Frankfurt. A good portion of the passengers were German, so interesting to hear all the conversations, not understanding much but still interesting. The kid behind me kept kicking the seat, I wanted to turn around and say, “Halten sie, bitte” but wasn’t quite sure it was the right German phrase to get him to stop so didn’t. Knew he was German from listening to his conversation with the parents.
By the time we hit the ground in Frankfurt I needed a bathroom. Of course we had a really long taxi to the terminal, and bumpy too. What fun. Not. Needless to say the first thing we did when we finally got off the plane was to find a bathroom. After that we went through immigration, then walked through the customs area marked “nothing to declare” and there was nobody to declare nothing to, so we walked on through. Went to the main area and discovered we needed to take a shuttle bus to terminal 1 to get to the train that would take us to downtown Frankfurt. Did all that, then had to figure out the ticket machine (with the help of a woman who knew English) and buy train tickets. They never did collect them, Steve said we could have ridden for free, but I reminded him that they can and do check and it would be a big fine if we were caught. An uneventful trip downtown, then walking through the train station and down a block or two to our hotel, the Hotel Europa.
For 56 euros we got a small room with two double beds, a bathroom, TV, wireless internet, and breakfast. Not too bad for downtown Frankfurt. By this time Steve admitted that he was getting a cold despite his best efforts to stave it off. Apparently it’s been going around work….bummer. And it was classic Steve attitude, “I shouldn’t have come, it’s going to suck because I have a cold, etc.” to quote him. I know some of it was not feeling well, being disappointed because of that, and being tired from the long trip. After dropping off our stuff (did I mention we were on the 7th floor?) we went back to the train station for something to eat. Steve decided he wanted Burger King and that’s what we got. Would have liked something a bit more authentically German but choose your battles, right?
After dinner, I tried to find a geocache that was located at the train station. No luck. GPSr never got a great signal because of all the buildings, and there were a lot of people around. And when I turned back around the corner, the Poliezi were talking with someone. About what, I don’t know. But didn’t feel it would be wise to continue to poke around. So we went back to the hotel. Steve went pretty much right to sleep in our non air conditioned, no screen on the window room. Thankfully it cooled down. I decided to try to stay awake until the normal time for German bedtime and managed to last until 9:30 p.m., watching British CNN and working on the Ipod. The code that I was given for wifi only worked on one computer so I was out of luck on the netbook. Suppose I could have gone down and gotten another but I was just too tired to deal with it.
Slept about 4 hours until Steve woke up, miserable because of his cold. That woke me up and I was afraid I wouldn’t get back to sleep but managed and got in another 3 hours or so.