written by Cynthia Fridsma

I must admit that I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this German city when I booked a room for the two of us - me and my husband - to stay there from July 30 until August 1, 2005.

All I knew about Frankfurt was that it had a big international airport. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try and booked a room for 120 Euro via a last minute site for Hotels.

My first impression from Frankfurt was that it looks like a modern city in the United States of America. The sky scrappers that you can see caused this when you enter the city. The largest building over there is from the Commerz Bank with a height of 259 meters ( if I can believe the city guide we received from the Hotel).

On July 30, when we arrived after a trip of approx. 4 ½ hours by car, we came into the hotel just to discover that the hotel did not have a garage. A good thing, though, is that you can park your car free from Friday at 17:00 p.m. until Monday 8:00 a.m.. Yet, on the other hand: finding a place to park the car was hard for us. Still, after approx. ten minutes we had parked our car close to the hotel (just one block away).

We settled our self in the room and left the hotel. We took a walk to the shopping center of the town where a band was playing some old ZZ Top music. Too bad that the boys did not play Heather Nova songs.

Via a mall - ‘the Zeilgalerie mall’ - we had a free entrance to the top roof. Here you can also have a drink or eat something too.

With our feet on the solid ground we moved forward in the direction of the ‘Altstadt’. People in Frankfurt call this the backbone of Frankfurt, the Roman square in the Altstadt (Old city), dates back hundreds of years.

The well-kept appearance of Roman with the town hall is impressive. However, do not be deceived, they virtually destroyed most of these old buildings after World War II and were only recently rebuilt as replicas of the previous structures.

Here also lies the birthplace of the German constitution, founded in 1848 at Paul’s Church, which were both destroyed less than one year later by the riots arising from the French revolution.