Gute Nacht Frankfurt

The next instalment in The Year of the City Break was another weekend trip to Frankfurt, which I last wrote about here.

Being seasoned Frankfurters by now, we skipped the tourist sights and headed straight out for drinks.  I arrived just in time to catch the last day of Opernplatzfest, the Opera Square Festival, a sprawl of buzzing food and drink stalls outside the beautiful Alte Oper, the old opera house.

Now that he's had a few months to settle in, Boyfriend has firmly decided on a favourite bar.  Bar ohne Namen ("The Bar with No Name") is a tiny hole-in-the-wall which comes alive on hot summer evenings, when hordes of people spill out into the street clutching enormous gin and tonics and Aperol spritzes.

Frankfurt's Kleinmarkthalle is a bustling indoor market, a foodie's dream.  On Saturday lunchtime we munched and sampled our way through the Moroccan, Turkish, German and Italian market stalls, before settling down to a glass of wine and some lunch on the sun deck.

On Saturday night we skipped down to Walon & Rosetti, a hipster Italian restaurant, where we shared seriously salty lamb chops and melting tagliata steak, before spilling out into the street to join the crowds making the most of the summer heat.

Just around the corner, nestled in the middle of the red light district, is "the off-licence" - not quite a bar, not quite an off-licence, where you can buy a beer or a can of whiskey and coke, pull up a plastic chair and hang out with the shop's resident DJ.  With July temperatures up in the thirties, it was heaving.

The next morning we were feeling somewhat delicate.  Boyfriend's apartment is just around the corner from Frankfurt's Botanical Gardens, the Palmengarten.  It's a beautiful place for a stroll, and even has a sprawl of sunloungers set out on the grass if you're feeling lazy.

Being too scorching a day to explore the greenhouses, we made for the boating lake.  Surrounded by willow trees, it's full of enormous carp, busy ducks and serenely floating swans.

Making it look easy.

And who said Frankfurt was just a financial centre?

http://www.kleinmarkthalle.com/index-d.php

http://www.walon-rosetti.com/

http://www.palmengarten.de/#/de_DE/index/index

Vai Vai, Italy in Germany

Saturday night in Frankfurt, out for food and drinks and fun.  Boyfriend had had his eye on this restaurant since he moved to Germany, and had been waiting for me to try it out.  Vai Vai is a slice of hipster Italian cool that wouldn't be out of place in Shoreditch or the Lower East Side.

Part cocktail bar with DJ, part noisy, buzzing restaurant, Vai Vai serves up sexy Italian food not unlike that of our London favourite, Pizza East.

We started with Hugo cocktails - elderflower, mint, lime and white wine - whilst we perused the small-but-perfectly-formed menu.

Of the enormous starters, polpette (veal meatballs in tomato sauce) were tiny parcels of deliciousness, and the burrata was one of the creamiest and richest I've ever come across.  Bistecca alla Fiorentina, so rare it was practically still mooing, was as good as anything we've had in Florence.  

We left long after midnight, on the search for Frankfurt's famous 1920s smoky piano bar, Jimmy's, but the party at Vai Vai was just getting going.

Vai Vai is Italian for Go Go.  There's isn't much to add to that - if you find yourself in Frankfurt, go.

http://www.vaivai.de/

Guten Tag Frankfurt

The Year of the City Break continued with a weekend in Germany to visit Boyfriend.

Frankfurt gets a bad press sometimes, as being largely just a financial centre which empties at the weekends.  But that couldn't be further from the truth.  It's a young, vibrant city that lives its life outdoors, with plenty of hidden gems.  Hipster shopping, a terrace cafe culture and, above all, fantastic food.

The Bull and the Bear, outside the Deutsche Börse

http://www.bikeboutique-ffm.de/

Alte Oper, the old opera house

Sculpture in Rothschildpark

No trip to Germany would be complete without a schnitzel lunch.  On Saturday lunchtime Boyfriend ushered me into Apfelwein Wagner, a traditional German dining room packed with tourists and locals alike, feasting on enormous fried schnitzels and apfelwein, a sour cider.

At first sip, apfelwein tastes like something you might use to sterilise medical equipment, but paired with the rich, greasy schnitzel, it got better with every gulp.  After polishing off a schnitzel between us, along with the obligatory frankfurter (when in Frankfurt...), we were full to bursting.

A favourite spot for coffee or a light lunch is Brot und seine Freunde (literally 'Bread and its friends', awww), a tiny cafe with mismatched garden furniture sprawling out into the street.

My weekend visit was timed beautifully with one of the first hot days of the spring.  Frankfurt is a city built for the outdoors, with endless cycle lanes, paths along the river and sonnenterrasse (sun terrace cafes and bars).

At the first sign of sunshine, everyone flocks to Walden for weekend brunch on the sun terrace.  We kicked off Sunday morning with elderflower, mint and white wine cocktails, settling in for the day with a crispy pizza to people-watch and soak up the sun.

Danke Frankfurt, I'll be back soon.

http://www.apfelwein-wagner.com/htdocs/english/essen.htm
http://www.brotfreunde.de/
http://www.walden-frankfurt.com/website/walden.php?lang=deu&site=about