Exploring Frankfurt Germany During a 10 hour Layover

Hello Everyone! I’m kind of struggling to find the words to begin this post. Going back and editing through my photos and recounting my memories from this day brought me so much joy. This was my first time ever taking advantage of a long layover to explore a brand new city. Yet at the same time, I sit here and I struggle to put together just a simple photo story with nice brief little captions explaining this day.

Never in my life would I have thought going to Germany would feel almost taboo. Never in my life would I have thought that telling the US Customs guard I was in Germany would cause me to need a secondary inspection. But here we are. I apologize that I am unable to get to the point today and get right into what it was like to spend a day exploring Germany and I think a lot of these feeling around brought out due to the fact that things haven’t gotten much better. But here we are,  and I think thats part of the reason I’m so motivated to share images and stories of ‘the good times’ during times that aren’t necessarily ‘good’.

Because of the current situation going on in the world, my simply story from this day can’t really be told without noting the things above, and that’s what makes this day trip feel so unique now.

So without further adieu, let me take you back to what was simplistic, and super normal day exploring Frankfurt Germany during a 10 hour layover.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this was my first time ever using a long layover to explore a city.

We took the train from the airport right into the downtown area and reached the Old Town ‘Romer’ area after a quick walk. The thing I usually look forward to most when going to Europe are all the old style buildings that are often brightly colored with super unique characteristics and all the old churches. In Frankfurt you will definitely get you fix of charming old buildings.

Pictured above, the main old square area hits the nail on the head when it comes to unique character. The square is lined with shops, cafes, gorgeous old buildings and this beautiful white and red church with the green steeple, St. Nicholas Church. We ended up eating at the third restaurant from the left for lunch, Zum Standesamtchen.

From here it is an easy walk to get over the Main River. This is definitely very worthwhile to do as from the various bridges, there are some fabulous views looking toward the city. If you have more time, many of the museums are also on this side of the river.

Oddly enough, I’ve come to realize one of my favorite things to photograph is birds.. I think I get it from my Dziadziu. Lucky for me, down by the river there were plenty of ducks and birds posing down by the river.

Just before leaving the airport, a local man assisted us with the ticket machine for the train and recommended we see this ‘honeymoon bridge’. To be honest this was part of there reason we made our way to the water in the first place.

If you were to google, the name of the bridge is Eiserner Steg. It turns out this is a super lovely little walking bridge. Similar to other cities, this bridge has kind of gotten taken over to become Frankfurt’s version of a lock/love bridge.

After a little walk around we started to make our way into some of the churches and cathedrals.

In the middle of the picture, you can see Frankfurt Cathedral popping out from in between the buildings.

The cathedral itself is quite grand and really stands out from a far, which makes it quite easy to find.

One of the other things I like to do when exploring a new city is ditch the map and chase the church steeples or other larger buildings that creep out from the tops of buildings.

This is super fun way to explore a town because I find I often see way more since my explorations are not limited to a list I made for myself that was based on internet searches. To be honest some of my favorite travel memories are from using these tactics.

The other fun side of exploring churches is getting to see the interiors. It is easy to assume what the inside of a church may look like based on churches you have seen in other similar cities or other similar churches. In the case of this church, I was a little bit surprised by how it looked from the inside.

Although the church had elements that did resemble what I would say is a typical European Gothic cathedral, there are some elements that I am still a little got off guard (in a good way) by. The way the interior of the church is lined with these copper red almost faux bricks feels a little unique to me, I also really liked how the color of interior very much matches the exterior.

The rest of our day we actually decided to do the Hop-On hop off tour. It was a little rainy and overcast and this was actually a super effective way to get to see the rest of the city. We ended up going back to the airport pretty early for our flight and taking a nice little nap before our flight.

The day ends there for us. It really was a lovely day and I love that I was able to get out and explore a new city… who would have thought that my African adventure would also include Germany? I will definitely be taking advantage of long layovers in the future to see more cities.

Now that I’ve finally reached the end of this post I thinks I can safely say the most important thing I learned from this day is that during bad or tough times on only it is perfectly okay to still be able to have good memories, but it is also extremely important to be able to look back to darker times and still see light. I know times are still tough and the situation is still not better but everyday I am trying my very hardest to still be able to see the light.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day!