Fine, large Day

Day 2

“A Fine, Large Day”

The title for today’s post is a quote from Bea and Bev’s father. Thursday was so fine and large that we headed straight to bed at 9:30 without downloading pictures or blogging.

All fine days come with a few challenges. So we started by taking the hotel shuttle back to the airport for a few key tasks…. finding the place where we are to meet the Elderhostel group on Saturday and getting Euros for Lynn and Bea after their travel card failed repeatedly. So it was after 11 when we finally left the airport train station and headed to Frankfurt and museum row…just south of the river. Frankfurt is the Manhattan of Europe. According to our favorite travel guy, Rick Steves, in the 1980’s the city decided to devote 11 % of its budget to the arts and culture. (Muncie, eat your heart out!) Nine museums line the street across the river. We chose the Stadel Art Museum, founded in the 19th century by a patron of the arts; it is the oldest and most prominent art museum in Germany. A perfect setting for a drizzly day.

But our first stop, of course, was the museum’s Holbein Café…a black, stainless, and glass restaurant featuring beautifully presented small portions of interesting foods in long, shallow white tray dishes…diced salmon between little potato cakes, crispy sea bass, lemon grass and curry soup. German beer, of course.

For the next four hours we toured the permanent collection….Steen, Hals, Picasso, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Ruben, Renoir, Monet, and lots of German painters we hadn’t heard of. In 1937 Hitler removed 700 painting deemed ‘decadent’. In the years since, the museum has repurchased a number. Why “Dog Lying in Snow” qualified as decadent, we couldn’t fathom! In advance of the Allied attacks, museum personnel removed the rest of the collection to safety, preserving it for today.

Then it was back to the café for dessert and coffee…small portions of bourbon crème brulee, warm chocolate cakes, and warm apple compote with yogurt ice cream on the same long white dishes.

By now the sun was getting low. The cobblestone sidewalks were strewn with wet sycamore leaves. We walked along the river again, watching the lights of the city come to life…the modern cloud-scrapers as well as historic buildings. Headed back to Sachenhousen’s narrow, twisting streets of half-timbered houses and one of the three remaining 14th century watchtowers. We are going to try to download some pictures.