2007-Dec-17 - Freezing in Frankfurt

Arrived in Franfurt to a blast of winter weather which was just right to freeze the "balls of a brass monkey" :) By the way, the old saying isn't a reference to male monkeys but to the fact that cannonballs used to fall off the "brass monkey", a brass triangle plate which they were stacked on in a pyrimid shape beside the cannons, because the cannonballs were iron and did not stay on the brass when it shrank in extreme cold!! However I digress ... to Frankfurt ... in an ironic way it is a great place to finish the trip as its like a summary of the whole trip in some ways. I wandered out this evening for a bite to eat and found within the city centre, resturant after restaurant from many of the places Ive stayed - Donna Kebabs from Turkey, pastries from Italy, rice and noodles from China, an Irish Pub with F&C, an Asian buffet, Spanish Paiella and ... yes you guessed it ... a Mongolian Marquee!! I actually settled for an Indian meal, which was delicious, but mainly because the Irish Pub was closed for their Christmas party. Dinner there tomorrow night. The people are all here too, Turks, Asian, Italian, East Europeans, English, Indians ... a..n..d.. even a few German accents lol, but not much "old cultural stuff".

The immediate problem though is that most of the shops DONT take Visa!!! Arrrrgh. Ive only 8 Euros left and need that for the train to the airport and dont want to draw out any more from an ATM cos the bank fees will cost more than what I need for my last day. Its either starve or go abit up market and use the card. Delima, delima lol.

Portugal was the perfect place to while away 6 days of downtime before the trans Canadian "dash" and is another of those places deserving further exploration. The old city is a maze of intrigueing, winding streets built on an incredable steep hillside over looking the river. There is a great mix of old cultural icons and modern city convience - rail, tram and bus transport, which is balanced extremly well. All very picture postcard too!!. The hostel itself was laidback and friendly with free wifi, although the most God awful music was played most of the time. The food is inexpensive and from the look of the shops most stuff here is really cheap too - leather shoes and boots from $NZ10. Naturally we have sampled some of the local refreshments on offer too, and have also found these to be half the price we had paid elsewhere in Europe (in the supermarket you can buy good wine for as little as $1.80!!!! a bottle).

I have even changed my mind on the value of Port as a drink. Surprisingly the locals don't drink much of the stuff - the majority gets exported to England and it was actually an English invention. This change came about after Ross and I decided to make a visit to one of the many Port tasting places where they certainly didnt stint in the size of the sample, and you didnt have to "spit" it out either ;) Having finished my 3, Ross's 2 (Ross finds Port too sweet and "forced" one down) and a few extra free samples, I decided that Port isn't all that bad ;) Needless to say, after a morning session such as this, we completed the day with a beer lunch and then a beer dinner - with a bit of food on the side - lol. The barman, cum cook, at our "local" made us his "special", which he told us on another night quite proudly "is a special of Porto - not Portugal" and consisted of 3 layers of bread containing cheese, sausage and steak, topped by a fried egg with the whole thing beng drapped with 5 slices of cheese. Next it was surrounded by chips and the whole lot drenched in a mix of tomato sause and beer, heated up with the steam from the coffee machine!! It went down a treat!!! Luckily our "local" was'nt too far from home but the bloody hill appeared a LOT steeper this time around!!