Thursday, July 30: More Frankfurt

On Thursday, David was off work again, so in the morning we were trying to decide what to do. There were several good options and we could not decide between them, so we utilized a strategy Bela and David had used before of listing the option and rolling a die to decide which one will actually happen. Well, the winner was the "Städel Museum", an art museum in downtown Frankfurt. We walked to the train station, which is already a fun expedition with 2 little boys!

 
 
Then we rode the train to the Frankfurt downtown station.

 

 The walk to the museum was nice. We crossed the Main river and walked along it for a while under these awesome trees that made a nice shade canopy over us.

 

The Städel Museum was really interesting. We had just been to the Chicago Art Institute, so I was not sure how impressive it would be, but it was very nice! The "sculptures" on the right were created by an automatic sculpture machine. Looked a bit like a pile of poop, we thought. The moving (rotating) sand rake exhibit was interesting, though.

Ben was not sure what the deal was with the power cord hanging from the ceiling... modern art! The rainbow colored junk was pretty, though!

Giant distorted wall mirror!

 
An interactive exhibit where you could adjust the color and tint of the light around your head.

Alex's favorite picture, "One Thousand Year Old Oak"

Picasso

The guys chilling with Goethe in the background.

Marc Chagall

A Degas sculpture that looked like a warm-up stretch

A beautiful impressionist painting with very thick application of paint.

Rembrandt's Samson and Delilah

One of Daryl's favorites, a photo of James Dean

Even the boys had more fun there than they expected to have. Unfortunately, poor Almut spent most of her time taking care of Sami, who was still sick with a cold and a bit needy.

This was the outside of the museum. The circles are skylights!

 After a few hours at the museum everyone was hungry and thirsty and we walked to a nice place near Schweizer Platz to eat lunch. After ruling out sushi and a few other options along the way, we wound up at an American Burger Chain called "Bareburger". It was a nice place. We all had burgers, which in hindsight was not true to the food fame of Frankfurt... Bela was the only one who ate a real "Frankfurter", a hot dog! His mouth was barely big enough to fit around it!

More walking along the beautiful Main river. The canopy trees were really nice!

 

A lot of people attached locks to the bridge.

 

 

We were a bit rejuvenated after lunch and a short rest, so we walked on through the Frankfurt Altstadt, with a lot of beautiful churches, buildings, etc.Then we came to a mall (My Zeil), where Ben wanted to look briefly for swim trunks. The architecture was very interesting and modern.

 Both Bela and Sami had fallen asleep, so Almut and David decided to chill at a restaurant and have a coffee while we went in. Poor Almut was carrying Sami in a backpack carrier, since Bela had fallen asleep in the stroller.

 We never did find swim trunks, but Ben and Alex spent a long time in a store that some Harry Potter wands and Alex eventually bought a Marauder's Map there.

Then we rode the train back and still had to walk back to David's house. By then. after a nap, Bela was full of energy again! It was a long, but great day. 

 Back at the house, we had another lovely supper of pasta, asparagus and salad, and then watched the quarterfinal Euro 2016 game (Poland v. Portugal), which ended in a penalty shoot out win for Portugal! Thank you, David and Almut for a wonderful time!