You guys!  I’m on vacation, which means spending my much needed time away from a computer in front of a computer!  But instead of reading or playing solitaire or whatever it is that I claim to do, I’m writing captions for photos!

So!  What’s the deal with this trip?  Becca and I are going to Tuscany (!)and Croatia (!!) for two weeks, then I’m spending a month in Hungary.  But that’s not what we’re talking about today.  Today we’re talking about Frankfurt, Germany, home of the Hot Dog!!!  When booking our trip, we had a choice between a four hour layover in Frankfurt or a nine hour layover.  We chose nine, which lead to the Best Layover!  And there’s pictures to prove it.

FRankfurt from TRain

So nutshelled: left DCA at six, which is far too early, because you’re not really tired enough to go to sleep immediately.  Arrived FF also way too early, around 7 or so.  Ughausted.  But then we went to town!  Saw some sites, including a children’s pseudo-marathon!

Minithon

Kids love running. Checked out the cathedral, the office buildings, the people speaking germans wearing suits.  Went to the Palmgarten, or something similarly named, to see, among other things, palm trees.  And turtles.  I would have included more pictures, but the internet connection is kinda shoddy.   Eventually, we decided to get dinner and head back to the airport.  Then it took us literally an hour to find a restaurant that wasn’t Italian.  FFers love ITalian food.  We do too, naturally, but we weren’t ready to commit to it that hard yet.

So, found dinner.  I accidentally bought a diet kiwi water instead of a regular water, and that was a bummer.  Otherwise, a fine time.  Becca and I went back to the airport, flew to Florence, (which they call Firenze, just to confuse tourists, which is odd cause I’m suspicious there are more of us foreigners than locals there but whatever) and then drove our own personal rental car to our ho(s)tel in Siena.   (Becca drives like a champ, btw!) Not downtown Siena, mind you, an outskirtsy part with a funny smell and lots of dumpsters.  But it’s affordable and they have Italian restaurants, which they adorably call ristorantes.  They didn’t have all-you-can-eat breadsticks, but otherwise the places seemed authentic.  Now it’s actually tomorrow and I’m a day behind, but so it goes.  Lot of the photos didn’t get auto-rotated like they should have been, and it’s unclear whether I feel like doing that myself.  Chow!