Frankfurt, Germany

In the giant cat house during feeding time...

Lily and I watch the tiger eat. (Rich says it looks like the tiger is whispering in Lily's ear)

Yum!

Double yum!

A sun bear...

Even the hippos thought it was ridiculously hot!

This rhinocerous wasn't too pleased with the heat either.

Our tired and melting children.

The lion took a break to look right at me. Yikes!

Houses in Frankfurt.

More dwellings in Frankfurt along the river.

A church along the riverside.

The very tired Messina family at the fountain in Frankfurt next to the zoo.

The entrance to the zoo.
We left Boston around 10 p.m. at night on a Saturday. We only had about an 8 hour flight to Frankfurt. Not too awfully bad. However, we were on an older plane and there wasn't individual movie screens or even some that were close by. Between the two meals they served on the plane, I think we all slept maybe 3 hours on that flight through the night. When we landed in Frankfurt, it was 11 a.m. Sunday morning.
Here's the kicker: we had a 10 HOUR layover. Our flight didn't leave until almost 10 p.m. that night. We had planned for this and Rich had talked to one of the German officers at NATO and gotten some maps and directions of what to see and do in Frankfurt. We left the airport and rode the train to the zoo. It was a very hot and humid day and we actually missed seeing many animals because they were sheltered away from the heat of the day. One thing we did get to see that was really neat was they fed the lion, lioness and tiger while we were
there. That was pretty cool.
We left the zoo and walked along the riverwalk, looking for a cooler breeze as we made our way to the main train terminal. By the time we got to the airport and to our gate, we were all totally spent. Our flight was then delayed...the weather in Germany was poor because of all the heat and humidity....storms were popping up everywhere. We finally made it back to Norway around 1 a.m. Monday morning. It was pouring down rain, windy and about 50 degrees. Yep, we were home. :o)