How's that for a creative title post? Hey, after getting very little sleep, taking the train 2.5 hours to Nuremberg, and managing to stay awake today, I think that is pretty good. Let's back up...

The flight to Frankfurt was around 8 hours, as advertised, and we all really liked Lufthansa . Good food, good service, good entertainment, get me across the ocean in one piece. Check, check, check and check. We landed around 7:20 a.m. Friday. I had read about how huge Frankfurt's airport is, but WOW. 
 After deplaning, we rode a shuttle bus a solid 10 minutes to our terminal. 
 Then, we had to go up about 500 escalators. 
 Then we had to walk through baggage claim (we carried on our bags, our whopping 17.5-lb suitcases).
Then we had to go through border control, which pretty much consisted of the German gent asking how long we were staying. 
THEN, we had to take another corn maize to the fernbahnhof, or, Frankfurt's long distance train station. It's very nice, and we had about an hour to kill before boarding our direct train to Nuremberg.  

We rode a high-speed train, and the dummy that I am didn't realize we were sitting in reserved seats, so after about 10 minutes of riding, we had to move. We found other seats just fine and enjoyed the views to Nuremberg. The ride was smooth and very easy . Dad slept most of the time. 

After arriving, we walked to our hotel in the Altstadt (old town) and decided to grab some lunch. Our Ibis is clean and small (standard for a Euro hotel). Nuremberg has a population of about 500,000, and it was badly destroyed during the war. However, they did a great job of rebuilding it and making the houses look like something Hansel and Gretel would've lived in.

We had a nice lunch outside, and much to our surprise, it hit 74 degrees today! Full sun, no breeze, so we were a little warm sitting outside. I started to turn pink, but we weren't about to complain about leaving cat-and-dog raining Chicago. For lunch, I took my chances and pointed to something in German on the menu, and ended up with a small steak, pork and a nice baked potato. Dad and Bob ordered the same. Maude had wienerschitzel. 

After lunch, we strolled the Altstadt, visited St. Lorenz Church, a medieval church consecrated in 1477! It was beautiful with its stone arches. There was also a symphony rehearsal, which was kind of fun to watch. We also walked to Hangman's Bridge, or Henker Steg, where the city's executioner used to live back in the day. The tower still stands where this person lived, and the Pegnitz River and bridges in the town are really cute. 

We stopped for a beverage, and while Bob and Maude decided to rest at the hotel, Dad and I took the Number 9 tram (I was a rock star and managed to buy our tickets using the machine!) to the Nazi Party rally grounds and Documentation Center. The grounds were started in the 30s, but a lot of it was never finished. Here is where the party had a lot of its big rallies. The center had so many pictures and films. We arrived a little after 4 and were literally the last ones to leave, as it closed at 6. I can tell Dad really enjoyed it, and some of the leaders he has been reading about were featured in this museum. It's one of those museums that isn't a "feel good" place, but it's important to understand and see. At least I think. 

Dad then called Mom on Facebook messenger, where she gave him the rundown of her day, and then we took a walk for a simple piece of pizza and a coke. We weren't that hungry, and didn't want to sit and eat a huge German meal of meat, fat and more fat. By this time, it was around 8 p.m., and jet lag was starting to set in. We decided to call it a night.

Tomorrow, it's off to Munich! Thanks for reading.
Jamie