We awoke early on our last day in Frankfurt had breakfast and took a walk to the historic area. Clearly one of the main tourist traps, there was a queue of air-conditioned buses lined up along the street, a gaggle of tourist groups in the square and a couple of brash Eastern European newlyweds who drove right up to the door for photos. We took a few snaps and headed for the Arts and Culture gallery – the architecture looked more impressive from the photos – and headed back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Münster, our base for the next three days. The train wound its way back up the coast along the well-worn path of the past few days to Koblenz although this time we kept going. I got closer to the ducks of Bonn this time than ever before as we passed through the former capital on our way north. Unfortunately, even though it was bucketing down as we passed through, no actual duck sightings. It does look like quite an attractive town though. Dan was getting really excited about the one things he had planned to do – visit Germany’s biggest tank museum. When we arrived in Münster, Dan started researching how to get there and it turns out the tank museum is actually in Munster not Münster, which was about 300 km away. He did get over the disappointment after a while.

Münster on the other hand was a pretty little town – about the same population as Canberra and a heap of students as well. It was extremely pretty though. The old town had been cleaned up and modernised with luxury stores in old buildings and there are about 1001 churches throughout. There is a riding/walking track that circles much of the old town and it is like an avenue beautifully shaded with trees. There is greenery everywhere which looks fabulous against the older building. And bicycles. Münster is apparently the bicycle capital of Germany and it shows. Everywhere you look there are people getting themselves from point a to b on a city bike –young old , students, professionals and most of the old city centre isn’t accessible to cars. It is a delight to walk around in. There is very little reference to some of the sordid history of the town though – this is where the Anabaptists set up shop and were subsequently defeated but there is no sign of any of that save for the cages they were strung up in that are still attached to the church spire. (The Man at C&A – Ballistic Allshorts – while nothing can replace The Specials’ original, my fave 90s ska core outfit go a bit trad ska on this number and somehow it works.)

After checking into our quite comfortable hotel, we took a short walk around town, principally to check out some noise cancelling headphones – the Sony pair I had paid $50 for out of a vending machine at JFK had finally bitten the dust. I haven’t yet bought a replacement pair but am leaning towards the Philips offering. By this stage we had enough and decided it was time for dinner. The knowledgeable trip advisor app scored gain and pointed us in the direction of a very popular Gasthaus. The service was fabulous and the food quite exceptional. We shared entrees of delectable deep fried camembert (a secret indulgence of ours) and some locally produced salami. For mains Dan went with schnitzel (again) although this time it was veal. I had a superb dish of pork medallions with bacon and baked apple slices. Mine came with one of my fave German dishes ever – fried potatoes and Dan’s came with a warm potato salad, which tasted like it was mixed with onion and some sort of vinegar based salad dressing – not at all what I expected. The fried potatoes were fabulous though. After dinner (it was by this stage 10pm – that northern summer twilight really does fool you) we headed back to the hotel and crashed.