Yep, we’re up at our normal early time, but what a night!  Boy these beds are great and comfy and we both slept like logs.  We manage the bathroom and shower – it’s small but efficient – and then head downstairs to see if we can get any coffee or anything.  Breakfast is 45 euros, and we aren’t springing for that, but the bartender guy says we can get cappuccino, so what the heck.  6 Euro 20 later and we have machine cappuccino.  At least it is caffeine. 

We’ve still got plenty of time before the 10am opening of the museums we are visiting today, so we go to explore the area, scoping out the restaurant we want to eat tomorrow (closed on Sundays) and the hotel where the car rental for tomorrow is located.  Then to the train station because that appears to be the nearest convenience store, a Spar that is reputed to be a rip off, but what can you do?  There is also a food court here that we check out for a possible dinner tonight.  There is a wide selection and it might be a good place to be – as it is, Ed gets a coffee and we sit a while and strategize our day.

The area around the train station can only be described as sketchy – lots of homeless and random people walking around talking to themselves.  It is early morning on a Sunday though, and we’re thinking as the day goes on and more people are coming and going through the station it will improve. Plus, it stays light here really late – like 9 or 9:30 at night, so it isn’t like we’d be coming back here in the dark.  We’ll see.

Striking out into the streets of Frankfurt, we wander down roads lined with every type of restaurant you could want – except German that is!  There is Australian, American, Lebanese, Halal, Asian (Sushi), Turkish, you name it.  But you know, when in Germany….we want traditional German food, and the food court is looking better and better!

Veering off these main roads, we head toward the river walk, easily finding the Jewish Museum, our first stop of the day.  Here in the courtyard is a magnificent aluminum sculpture of the mirror image of a tree – the crowns entangled – symbolizing the history of Frankfurt’s Jews:  simultaneously connected and uprooted. As we are still 10 minutes early, we are able to sit on a sunny bench in the courtyard and ponder this lovely sculpture and its meaning.

Finally gaining admittance to the museum – bag search, walk through the sensor, door must be unlocked by museum staff – we buy a combo ticket for here and the Judengasse Museum (which we didn’t even know existed) and head upstairs to the permanent displays.  The museum is actually housed on three floors of the actual Rothschild family’s former residence – and still has the gorgeous marble staircases lined with huge mirrors and chandeliers, plus other personal touches such as wallpaper in certain areas, etc.  The exhibition begins in the present day, using personal stories to show how Jewish life continued and flourished after the Holocaust, with artwork and pieces of Judaica, menorahs, mezuzahs, Tora scrolls and the like.  There is also a whole Anne Frank display with lots of her writings, and Frank Family objects and keepsakes as well as pictures from early times until almost the end.

Plus, all throughout the museum, the exhibits tell the story of the Jews here, who as early as the 1400s were segregated for their safety and made to live in the Judengrasse, a long street that was outside the walls of the city with narrow little houses the width of one or two beds.  They could come and go, it wasn’t quite like the Nazi ghettoes, but still, it was a ghetto nonetheless.  The emperor actually protected the Jews because they were traders, of course, and made money that could be taxed.  But still, to think this type of segregation and persecution went on far before Hitler and the Holocaust is just eye-opening. 

There are lots of interactive displays, including one called “Ask the Rabbi” where you can chose a topic and 5 rabbis of different levels of faith (Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed) give their views on the subject.  Entertaining and informative!

The museum is fabulously interesting, and one of the best parts is that they have these little cards called “Museum to Go” which have some sort of a code on them that when you hold them up to assigned spots they upload that exhibit explanation to a website and we can look at it later with the access of a PIN code that is on the card.  Totally cool! Because some of these things bear more research – like the protests over the play “Garbage, the City, and Death” which took place in 1985.  Or the artist, Samson Schames, who was interned in England and created his art from paints made of beetroot juice, shoe polish or condensed milk and brushes made from tufts of his hair tied to twigs.  Ingenious!

Great way to spend a couple hours!  Back outside in the gorgeous sunshine, we wander over to the Romer, the name of the town hall and the center of the old town of Frankfurt.  Here there are tons of half-timber houses and gorgeous architecture as well as the main cathedral.  There is or was also some huge festival here on the square, which we it appears they are breaking down, making for less than ideal pictures and less than spacious walking areas.  Meandering around the old town area, we search out a sit down restaurant where we can have our first authentic German meal. There are lots of little cafes, many with brunch, and it takes us a while before we stumble upon Zum Standesamtchen, a lovely little traditional German pub, where we manage to grab the last indoor seat (the outdoor tables are just being set up and they are having to drag over chairs and go somewhere else to get the umbrellas – whatever this festival was, it definitely disrupted the businesses here!).

Nonetheless, we are seated, inside and happy with a huge beer, a good pour of wine, traditional local frankfurters (yes, think hot dogs!  Skin on delicious hot dogs), excellent sauerkraut and a huge portion of pork schnitzel and fries.  Can’t get much more traditional than that! Yum!

After lunch, we make our way over to the Judengasse museum which turns out to be the highlight.  The museum tells the story of the Judengasse, the Jews who lived there and how the Holocaust affected the area, including the synagogue which was burned during Kristallnacht and the graveyard which was desecrated, but that the powers that be managed to save about 1600 gravestones while the other were destroyed by the Nazis.  There are also great old pictures of the original street as it looked before it was razed in the 1800s and of the massive synagogue before it was burned to the ground. 

In the lower level of the museum are the actual foundations for a part of the Judengasse.  They were discovered when the city started building the public works building here on the land. They were going to just bulldoze the foundations and forget about them, but there was public outcry and the foundations and archeological finds were saved and made into a museum right here in the public works building.  Crazy that no one would care about this type of history! 

You can actually go down into the foundations and walk around and see exactly how the houses were laid out, how the wells were position and the inner workings of the infrastructure.  Plus there are great interactive displays here as well, one that shows a movie and then on an acrylic model, lights up the location of the house or place they are describing in the movie and another that uses a headset to verbally explain different occurrences and houses in the ghetto.  Incredibly well done.

Plus, as a finale, you can ask for access to the graveyard and actually wander about exploring the gravestones that have been saved and remain.  A fabulous way to end our museum day tour.

Making our way back toward the hotel, we take a different route and stop for drinks at this cute little café called Hans Im Gluck – translated to mean Hans in Luck, one of the Brother Grimm fairy tales about a boy who believes he is lucky and everything happens to him is good.  It has an adorable logo of Hans and a little duck following him – which is what draws me in.  The beer and wine are pretty good too!

From here we hit the main square, the Hauptwache with the huge statue dedicated to Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press.  Then it is onto the train station and Spar, which is expensive but necessary, and back to the hotel for an hour or two of afternoon drinks and relaxation (even if they charged us 9 euros for the wine and it clearly said 6 euros, it is still great – trocken Riesling – will have to start looking for dry Riesling in the states now!).

Then it is back to the train station for dinner – hey – it ain’t Japan, but it’s a food court with lots of options so we can get what we want.  And what Ed wants is a knockwurst and a bratwurst – one with bread – accompanied by sauerkraut.  I just wanted a pretzel and sauerkraut, which the sweetest girl at the Paulaner Beer house gets for me – after she figures out that sauerkraut is the English (I say American really!) way to say krautsalat, but then realizes there isn’t enough sauerkraut, they’ve run out.  She gives me what is left and asks if I want anything else – I really don’t, but she is so worried and insistent that I have something else, I agree to potato salad.  She rings me up and then decides I can’t carry everything with the wine, so she grabs the wine and the potato salad and walks me outside to where Ed is happily munching away on his wursts.  How sweet!  And while I really didn’t want the potato salad, OMG, it was one of the best things I’ve eaten!  Not the typical German potato salad we think of, it was cold and had a more sweet and creamy sauce.  It was ever so good!!!  And what little krautsalat was there was equally awesome – as was the pretzel.  Perfect!  And outside on the patio to boot. 

That’s what is called a perfect evening!

Walking back to the hotel, we stop at the little corner “kiosk” store (it has a sign that says it is an Internet Café, but it is convenience store all the way) where we are shocked at how much better the prices are here than at Spar!  We just figured it was a little local place and the prices would be higher. Au contraire Pierre!  Ed gets a couple of beers and I scope out the much bigger wine selection for tomorrow night!  Seriously!  We’ll for certain be back here, we’d much rather support local people than a huge International chain!

We spend the rest of our evening in our teeny little comfy room, watching The Man From Toronto – thank you Gede (our Quest stateroom attendant) for suggesting it.  An excellent comedy and a sweet way to end our evening.