On December 22, we departed Hamburg and boarded the first class train to Frankfurt. Our original trip was an open jaw and we were to fly home from Frankfurt on Christmas Day, with Delta One. Now we literally haven’t gone anywhere other than Hamburg since our cruise was canceled, so we are thinking about extending our trip.
We found a cruise with MSC on MSC Virtruosa last minute. It no longer had any room large enough for 4 of us. It actually only had 2 rooms left – both in the Yacht Club. It was expensive. We had to pay full adult price for all 4 of us. We thought about the fact this may be the last and only time we would take our kids to Europe, so we decided to pull the trigger.
The upside is, this cruise stops at most of the same ports as the one we were supposed to be on with AIDA, so I already did my research and had an idea what I wanted to do with each port. Granted, I wasn’t able to book the same private tour we had in mind for Le Havre (the tour guide wasn’t available for the new date), but at least I knew I wanted to do the White Cliffs. So we were able to put this trip together pretty quickly.
Now we just have to carry out our trip as planned in Frankfurt, then buy some new train tickets to go back to Hamburg to get on the new ship, then change our airfare to go home on New Year’s Day. Easy. NOT.
Day 1 in Frankfurt
Today, we got up pretty early to get ready for our train ride. The train station in Germany has so many restaurants and shops, it’s like an attraction in its own! Since we were riding in first class, there was food and beverage service, but don’t expect much from it. We asked for a menu and we never saw the server again. We ended up going to the cafeteria cart and getting the food ourselves.
(We did not have to reserve seats for our train, so we were allowed to take any empty seats. This is not a problem when the train isn’t full, but it can be a problem when it is. Seat reservation is not free so after paying a pretty penny for first class, I didn’t want to pay any more. The hotel had told us first class usually isn’t that full anyway, which turned out to be correct.)
If you are going to buy food on the train, it’s almost always a good idea to buy a combo than buying items a-la-carte. It’s a lot cheaper. Don’t expect the food to be much though. We did it more for novelty than anything else.
For dinner, we walked to L’Osteria, an Italian restaurant that was pretty close to our hotel. The food was very good and service was very fast.
Intercity Hotel Frankfurt Central Station
We chose Intercity Hotel Central Station for the next two nights because the location is right across the street from the train station. The rooms are very cheap here. With 4 of us, I got two rooms, so the kids had their own room. I booked a premium room for us and a basic room for them. Not a big price difference, but honestly the only difference was that our room had a coffee maker inside. The hotel has a small breakfast (not free) and if you are one of their rewards members, you get some credits to spend at the bar. (Free to join the rewards program.) The other great thing about this hotel was that we received free city transit passes for the length of our stay, so we were able to ride the bus and train for free!
We liked this hotel. The breakfast was pretty simple, but the location is so convenient and the value is 5/5. I would totally stay here again.
Day 2 in Frankfurt
Sunny Side Up
For breakfast/lunch, we ate at Sunny Side Up. Which, you guessed it- has amazing Sunny Side Up eggs!! Next, we took the train to Römerberg, the historic Market Square.
Römerberg
Römerberg is a historic market square in Frankfurt, with reconstructed timber houses lining the streets. There are lots of street eats and delicious glühwein (mulled wine) here. The area feels magical and reminds me of our home state German town of Helen, GA.
TimeRide
We had some time to kill before our dinner reservation so we decided to pop in to TimeRide, a historical museum using virtual reality to tell the story of the history of Frankfurt. Since we didn’t book this in advance, the only tour we could do was in German. This was OK because we were mostly there for the virtual reality part, which was available in English. I thought the “ride” was pretty good, although we ran into a couple of issues here. 1. They charged us the wrong price, after explaining to them that we wanted the family ticket, they still charged us as individual tickets, then when I questioned it, they couldn’t figure out how to make a refund. Eventually, the manager or owner came over and gave each of my child a stuffed animal as a compensation. 2. The virtual reality headset was glitchy. Alice’s headset gave out when it was about 5 minutes left on the story so she didn’t get to see some of the cool parts. I let her have mine afterwards so she could see the finale. Overall it was a fun little show and it was good for Ava to practice her German.
Holbien’s Cafe
For dinner, we ate at the fancy, beautiful Holbien’s Cafe. The price is not for the faint of heart, but the service and food were top notch.
We ended the night with some free drinks at our hotel bar (using the credits they gave us).
Day 3 – Frankfurt/Heidelberg
Today, we have a booking for a small group tour to Heidelberg, the main reason we wanted to visit Frankfurt. Teddy used to attend some classes at the Heidelberg University.
We start the day at the Crepe station inside the train station. The kids love crepes and it’s fast and cheap.
Next, we walked to the meeting place Le Meridien Hotel, and boarded our bus.
Heidelberg Palace
Our tour includes the entrance to the Heidelberg Palace. We were also given a detailed tour of the whole palace and visited a huge wine barrel.
The palace is only partially rebuilt after many wars that had taken hits at it. To visit the castle, you have to ride the Heidelberger Bergbahn funicular railway for one stop – cars can’t drive straight to it. Heidelberg Palace is an important part of Heidelberg history,
The palace is absolutely grand and it would take a few hours to just walk through everything. It also houses the biggest wine keg in the world.
Some of the rooms are really cool to visit. Like the pharmacy.
Church of the Holy Spirit
Next we stopped at the Church of the Holy Spirit. It’s the largest church in Heidelberg. It’s still being used today.
Brückenaffe
Brückenaffe, meaning Bridge Monkey, is a popular photo spot. The sculpture is a monkey with two mice. The monkey’s head is hollow, so you can go under it and take pictures. The monkey holds a mirror in his hand. Legend has it if you touch the mirror, it will bring you wealth. If you touch the mice, you will have lots of children. I made sure none of us touched the mice.
Schnookeloch
For lunch, we were given some free time to walk around the town and eat at a restaurant of our choice. We wanted to choose something that has been here for a while since Teddy was here decades ago, so we chose Schnookeloch for lunch, a restaurant that is the oldest student bar in town.
We didn’t have a lot of time, nor did we have a reservation. We let them know how much time we had, the waiter spoke to the head chef, and they said no problem. We were able to get our food very quickly and everything was quite good!.
Of course, we had to have some mulled wine again.
This concluded our tour of Heidelberg. We rode the bus back and settled in for the night at our hotel. At this point, we were so looking forward to our cruise starting the next day. All we had to do was get up and get on the train to Hamburg, then take a taxi to the cruise port. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned…