Weekender

After the morning of misfortune, I met up with A as promised at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. We headed back to mine to drop his case and then had a quick lunch at the Italian place near Iroha. From there we wandered through the historic Romerplatz and through to the river, where we took the 100 minute cruise up and down the river. The boat was bigger than the one I'd taken before for the cruise and Night of the Museums - maybe they're getting into high season. We could hear all the commentary, although it was playing a minute or so after we'd passed whatever they were talking about.

For dinner we tried out a place with a terrace on top of the Galeria department store, but it didn't do much in the way of food. We ended up at the bar at Eschenheimer Tor, where they forgot my cheeseburger. When it did come, I stopped eating the chips halfway through as they seemed a bit funny. And spent most of the night being kept up by having to go to the loo. If it wasn't that, it would have been the party at the house next door. At least A judged the inflatable mattress to be comfortable, and it was large enough.

On Sunday morning, mindful of what might or might not be open, we headed to the Main Tower, passing some really nice parks that trace the old town walls. After the airport-style security check (where they let a man with a pocket knife through...) we got into the lifts, which had a panel showing you where in the building you were and how fast the lift was going - I think we hit 18kmph. The view from the top (190m) was fantastic and it is definitely on my list of Places to Bring People.

Next stop was Fressgasse, supposed to be Frankfurt's one-street stop for all things gourmet. It was however very quiet and many places were closed. After deciding against anything too outrageous, we ended up having sandwiches and coffee at a really nice place that I'll definitely go to again.

Suitably fortified, we got back on the U-bahn and headed to the Sudbahnhof and connected with the No. 14 tram. It all looked very urban until the stop before ours, when we suddenly came into trees and the tram started to climb slightly. By the time we got off, you couldn't see any trace of Frankfurt. We headed off in one direction and found an arboretum and the City Forest House, full of interactive exhibits for kids. It also had a very impressive map of the city and forest with height gradations, and we could see there was a lake not far from the tram stop, so we set off back there with brief pauses to rescue a snail and investigate some kind of dragon mascot.

After crossing the tracks, we headed off in one direction and found some streams, but also a dead end (coming up against allotments) and then went uphill, which we thought couldn't be right. Back to the tram station and map - the only maps were on each side of the tram stop, and there was almost no signposting. The fact that neither of us has any sense of direction didn't help, but we weren't desperate to get anywhere. It was a glorious day and nice to be out of the city. We finally found the lake, took photos and staggered off to a rest stop for beer and diet coke.

Then it was back to the city center and another new discovery for dinner - although it took us a little while to find, the Historical Stork Restaurant was lovely and had great food - veal with mushrooms in cream sauce with noodles with butter and white truffle oil. And very reasonable, compared to Iwase.

Finally it was the traditional sprint for the station, but we got there with 5 minutes to spare and I waved A off. As he'd said, it was great to have someone familiar to chat to, and I was hit by a wave of loneliness as I watched the train fill up. Giving in to the urge to treat myself - but wanting to carry on avoiding sweeties as I had been doing so successfully for that week - I stumbled across a huge selection of novels in English in a bookshop in the station and bought a crime thriller.

Which came in very handy today, which finally was not party time at the laundrette.

But all in all a fantastic weekend - three new places to take people and a comfy mattress to put them up on.