Damn....haven't updated this thing in months. I need to finish out my trip story.
Three cities in three days and it was time for our Thursday departure. We took a very early morning taxi to Berlin Tegel Airport. My friend was flying back to the USA via London Heathrow but due to my inability to get anything cheap back to Florida, it was actually cheaper for me to spend one more day in Germany and fly home the next day. So my friend was on British Airways and I was on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. I used it as a shopping day although I can't recommend it...Berlin would have been much better. Thursday night while wandering around the main train station I discovered that Frankfurt also had a red light district. But it was way different than Amsterdam. In Amsterdam the little store fronts were side-by-side with a nice selection of girls in each window or door. In Frankfurt there was one street which I guess could be described as red light hotels. There were numerous 5-6 story buildings that looked like Holiday Inns but above each window were flashing red neon tubes. I presume you go inside and peruse the corridors for something you like. No window shopping here
Friday was a day of frustration. The railroad engineers went on strike and my hotel was downtown and I needed to get to the airport. Most of the trains were cancelled but fortunately a few were operating, although very crowded. I did make it out there only to find out my 12:15pm flight on Condor Airlines was "delayed" to 4:40pm! WTF! So instead of being back in Orlando at 5:30pm it would be closer to 10pm. They did give us a deluxe lunch buffet at a nearby hotel which was nice but what to do with 4 extra hours? Do I hang around the airport or do I go back into the city and chance the situation with the trains. I ended up doing the latter and spent an hour at the Palmengarten (palm gardens). Although this place is famous, it was absolutely horrible; I've got more palms in my back yard than this place had growing in their indoor pavilion. What a dissapointment! Oh well, back to FRA, finally got on the plane and off we were. I even got to experience the distinctive look of beautifully lit-up Paris out my portside window as we climbed out to the ocean.
End of trip; a good time was had by all.
