Goodbye Chicago, Guten Tag Frankfurt

A visual on how reliant we have
become on our electronic devices

As you can imagine, the trip started on Sunday in the wonderful and always pleasant (HaHa) O'Hare Airport.  Hurry, hurry, you must arrive 3 hours before your flight!  If you don't we cannot guarantee your seat on the flight.  So being the rule followers that we are, Mom, Dad and I get to good old ORD at 12:30 for a 4:05 flight.  Plenty of time.....no problem.  Except for one small glitch.....no one, and I do mean NO ONE was at the ticket counter checking anyone in.  What!?!  No one at the ticket counter to begin checking in people?!?  That's exactly what I thought.....how crazy is it that they want you there at least 3 hours ahead of your flight and there is no one there to check you in?  Crazy nuts!!!

We finally get checked in - after waiting more than 45 minutes for a nice Lufthansa associate to arrive and receive our gate number.  B17 is the winning number for this flight and wouldn't you know it, B17 is the last gate in terminal 1.  I am sure the reason we had to be in that gate (ok well I am not completely sure, but it make complete sense in this non-frequent flier's brain) is because we were flying over on a Boeing 747.  I don't know about you, but the only time I have seen one of this in person was...well....NEVER.  Holy cow is that thing huge!  It never ceases to amaze me the number of people they can fit into such a small space.  This plane had 8 first class seats, 92 business class seats and 262 poor saps like us that are taking the trip of a lifetime and have to sit in seats that don't allow you to stretch for more that a few inches in any one direction.  Poor Dad had to sit behind a man that pushed his seat back as soon as he could and only moved it up to eat dinner.  Considering there is literally only enough room to put the tray table down when the seat is up in its full upright position, I was amazed at how well Dad did holding his temper.  I often wonder if I am just way too nice or if other people are just rude.  I saw other reminders of rude people as we flew across the Atlantic.  People continue to both amaze me with their friendliness and take me aback with their gaul.  (A topic for another time, I am afraid).  Amazingly after sitting for an hour between the gate and the tarmac, we managed to arrive in Frankfurt early.  After the flight over I am seriously considering paying for an upgrade.

We arrived before 8 am local time and were shocked at how quiet the roads, streets and airport were.  After  sitting down to eat a bit of breakfast, we found out that today is some sort of church holiday so many people had the day off work.  Once we arrived at the Sheraton, we went into the restaurant to have a bit of breakfast - the one on the plane was barely breakfast (to us anyway).  As we ate from the buffet, we decided to take the public train (I think it to be more a cross of a train and a trolley) to the museum district.    After paying more than 75 euro for the three of us (over $100 american) and picking Dad up off the floor, we made our way to the train.  We purchased our first train ticket in Germany and I thought to myself that we should take a couple of lessons from the Germans.  This is not only very easy to do but the ride is very quiet and smooth.

So we spent a couple of hours wandering the museum district down by the river and came back to the hotel as we were all exhausted.  Good news is I aonly had to re-direct Mom and Dad twice today...I think they were tired.  Bad news - my old Canon SLR won't load the driver I need to transfer pictures onto my laptop.  So tomorrow, I may have to find a digital card reader - I have to be able to add pictures from the camera to the blog.  It is a must.  Tomorrow going on a River Cruise then on to Cologne and Dusseldorf.  8 AM leave time so must get to bed.