Don's Germany, Switzerland and Austria Travels

We spend the third day traveling. We walked our luggage the one mile to the train and had breakfast at a Starbucks. They have lots of coffee shops here in Germany but not with milk alternatives. That seemed very foriegn to them. Joan needs a nondairy product for her latte. We came across a German/American guy from LA who has lived in LA over 30 years but comes back to Germany for vacation. It was interesting to get his perspective on health care in American vs Germany. Germany has very liberal health care for all. We discovered our train was cancelled as it was so full from the city it was coming from that it would not be stopping in Frankfurt. Went into information and got it fixed. Had 12 minutes to make it to our train. Arrived four minutes before the dooors opened. Took a lovely two hour train ride up to Koblenz. The last part followed the Rhine River where you start to see the large old castles, mostly in ruins. We walked the streets of Kolblenz the one mile to our hotel. Nice wa...

On day 2 we slept in really late. Coming in from the USA we did not go to sleep so we stayed up. Haven't done an all nighter in a long time. So we went to bed at 8:00 pm and slept until 10:00 am the next day. We went to the tallest building in town that has a observation deck. Went up some 50 floors and got a view of Frankfurt. A pretty flat place with some rolling hills in the distance. Germany doesn't allow urban sprawl. You have cities and small towns surrounded by agricutlture land. We then visited some of the squares in the city where there were lots of people. It is considered the German holiday season, so lots of Germans traveling. We wanted to eat at a sidewalk resteraunt. We found Hans and Franz's. Reminded us of the saturday night skit. On the way back to the hotel, we got caught up in a large Palastine protest parade. It was 1000's of people. Once we realized we were not going to get anywhere due to protest and police we decided to sit on the curb and watc...

We flew in over night from Seattle. arriving on August 29, 2025. Joan slept a few hours on the plane, I was unable to. Once arrived we Ubered to our Hotel, Ruby Loise Hotel, just on the outskirts of the bustling downtown Frankfurt. We got our room and decided to hit the town. We were no more than a 15 minute walk from most sight seeing activities. Since we are joining our Rick Steeeves tour in a few days, we had his Germany, Austria & Switzerland book so we did the Frankfurt self guided sight seeing walk mentioned in his book. We didn't get to the two stops by the train station as that went through the red light district. It got a little skechty. We went down the Zeil area. A store named the Galeria has a restaurant at the top. Did not eat there as it was cafetera style. We had drinks at the roof top bar. Awesome view of Franfurt skyline from there. Continue through the self-guided tour which ends on the pedastrian bridge (Eisernier Bridge) that goes to the south side of the ...