franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
Welcome to another franandaj trip report! This is becoming a trend for me, doing these non-Disney Trip Reports! LOL! But there is a DISboards connection here! Bear with me!
Last year Fran (my wife of over 26 years) passed away. When she passed, I was in the middle of writing a Trip Report from our last vacation that we took together. It was a Disney Cruise out of San Diego.
It took me a couple months to come back to the DIS after her passing, and when I did return, I had already planned a rigorous travel schedule for the summer of 2023. One of the things that I had decided to do was “pay back” all the folks who came to visit me at Disneyland. A lot of people said to me, “Whenever you’re in [insert city/province/country here], I’ll show you around.” So I started planning trips that did just that.
Well once my friends in Germany and Austria heard that I was planning to visit places this conversation began on the DISboards.
Well unfortunately, Jill didn’t have the PTO to accompany me on this trip (we have more plans coming up this year), so it was essentially me traveling solo, but I had friends everywhere I went. The only things I navigated on my own were the flights and the trains.
So let’s introduce the cast of characters. Magdalene is German, her husband Michael spent a lot of his life living in Florida. He goes back and forth between his German home and his American home, and he had only arrived back in Germany about a week before I arrived. He doesn’t like his picture being taken, and though we have met up quite a few times since our original in person meeting, I don’t have any recent (before the trip) pictures of him.
If you don’t know Magdalene, she is @Flossbolna on the DIS, and you can check out her TRs to find out more about her. I had to go all the way back to 2013 for this picture of Magdalene and myself, Fran is also pictured.
The other starring roles are played by sister and brother, Karin and Tom. She used to write a lot of Trip Reports on the DIS. Karin still shares their numerous journeys, but with a smaller group of folks mostly made of people she met on the DIS. The two are sitting on the left side of this photo next to Jill. They also do not like having their photos taken and you will not see many (or maybe any) of them in this TR! This photo dates back to 2018 when we all sailed on the Fantasy together.
So now you have a bit of background as to how the trip came together, here are the main details. I booked my tickets to Frankfurt on miles that Fran had on her American Airlines account. I flew round trip Business Class from LAX, with a stop in Dallas, where I picked up the International flight.
From Frankfurt, I took the train to Nuremberg, where I stayed for five nights, and then took the train to Linz, where I stayed for seven nights, and then returned to Frankfurt where I stayed in the airport hotel the night before my flight home. Magdalene was able to arrange my train tickets which was a tremendous help! As you will see I still have a few train mishaps, but nothing too bad!
Everything else was left up to my tour guides. They all did a fantastic job of keeping me entertained, fed, and keeping up my step count!
So let’s get this party started!
It was Wednesday morning, April 24, 2024. The alarm went off at 4:45. I'm getting pretty good at waking up for these early flights. According to my fitbit I went to sleep at 8:41PM the night before and immediately fell into a deep sleep. Not bad, I got about 6 ½ hours of sleep.
I had picked out my clothes for the flight several days before, so getting dressed was easy. No dilemmas there. Normally for my flights I would take a JUber (that's what we call Naked Jim when he drives me places). However just one week before, he had both his knees replaced so he was a little bit out of commission. Instead I asked my helper and cleaning lady, Donna, to give me a ride to the airport. I asked her to pick me up at 5:30, and she was early, better than late!
I fed the cats, made some coffee and then we were off! We were on the road by quarter to 6AM. The drive was fairly easy, and just after 6:30AM I was checking in and dropping off my bag. Evidently I neglected to add my Global Entry Passid to my ticket. At first I wasn't going to worry about it. I didn't have my number handy. But then I remembered that I had emails with my Global Entry and could access the number that way. I checked with the ticketing agent and he was able to add it to my ticket. Boy am I glad I did that, the regular line was super long!
He also told me that the Flagship Lounge was right next to my gate. I did not know that American had a lounge! I sailed through security and soon I was enjoying a “make it yourself” Bloody Mary as well as some fruit, salami and cheese.
My stomach is never ready for food early in the morning. Usually I need to wait a few hours before I'm actually hungry, so I just had a little snack. If I wanted I could have totally pigged out! They had everything from breakfast pastries to California Rolls, Lox & Bagels, eggs, tacos, sausage, oatmeal, and miso soup. There was more, but a lot of it was stuff I wouldn't eat, so I didn't bother to figure out what it was. I think it was roasted Brussel Sprouts and there was a weird pizza-like thing.
They had an entire full bar, a big selection of beers, wines, champagne, all self service!
I still had about half an hour before I wanted to leave to wait at the gate. My flight began boarding at 8:25AM and I decided I could hang out at the lounge until 8AM. So I poured myself a glass of Grüner Veltliner and sat at a table with a view of my plane.
At 8AM I left the tranquility of the lounge to wait at the gate. It was fairly chaotic and the gate agent had to keep telling people to back off from the gate. I was in Boarding Group #1 and it seemed like half the waiting area was in that group.
Finally I was able to board the plane. I was pleasantly surprised to find that First/Business Class had these pod style seats. It was a less than three hour flight and I did not expect this on the short haul flight. From Dallas to Frankfurt, yes, but this was a pleasant surprise.
Here’s me, pleasantly surprised about the seats on this plane!
I decided to watch Wonka, on the In-flight entertainment system. I thought it was rather amusing, not the greatest movie, but I do have to say Hugh Grant was amazing. When the beverage service came by I had a glass of white wine.
Later they came by offering breakfast. I passed on the breakfast enchilada which had cheese, corn, and egg. Instead I opted for the fruit plate with Vanilla Greek Yogurt.
I added the blueberries to the yogurt and topped it with the granola, and just ate the melon, pineapple, and strawberry by themselves. It wasn't a ton of food, but it would tide me over until I could get to the AA lounge in Dallas. I'm sure they have some great offerings as it is one of their hubs.
I finished the movie with just enough Time to visit the facilities before we began our descent Into Dallas and the captain turned on the Fasten Seat Belts sign. We landed on-time without incident.
I found the Admirals Club, and this was a sad club compared to what I'd seen in LA. The buffet had some hummus, pita chips, Greek salad, salsa, and some cheese cubes. On my second go around I discovered Chicken Tortilla soup and MInestrone Soup. So I had some of the latter. I got a glass of Chardonnay and ate my soup.
I really wanted to use the restroom, but the entire time I was in the lounge the ladies room had a sign on it that it was closed for cleaning. Luckily there was a companion restroom. I found a second buffet area as I was getting ready to leave. This one had some teriyaki chicken and a quinoa rice mix, but it didn't look very appetizing. I grabbed a few brownie bites before leaving.
Finally I leave the USA on this long awaited journey! Tune in to see how my visit to Bavaria and Austria turns out!
Last year Fran (my wife of over 26 years) passed away. When she passed, I was in the middle of writing a Trip Report from our last vacation that we took together. It was a Disney Cruise out of San Diego.
It took me a couple months to come back to the DIS after her passing, and when I did return, I had already planned a rigorous travel schedule for the summer of 2023. One of the things that I had decided to do was “pay back” all the folks who came to visit me at Disneyland. A lot of people said to me, “Whenever you’re in [insert city/province/country here], I’ll show you around.” So I started planning trips that did just that.
Well once my friends in Germany and Austria heard that I was planning to visit places this conversation began on the DISboards.
Well unfortunately, Jill didn’t have the PTO to accompany me on this trip (we have more plans coming up this year), so it was essentially me traveling solo, but I had friends everywhere I went. The only things I navigated on my own were the flights and the trains.
So let’s introduce the cast of characters. Magdalene is German, her husband Michael spent a lot of his life living in Florida. He goes back and forth between his German home and his American home, and he had only arrived back in Germany about a week before I arrived. He doesn’t like his picture being taken, and though we have met up quite a few times since our original in person meeting, I don’t have any recent (before the trip) pictures of him.
If you don’t know Magdalene, she is @Flossbolna on the DIS, and you can check out her TRs to find out more about her. I had to go all the way back to 2013 for this picture of Magdalene and myself, Fran is also pictured.
The other starring roles are played by sister and brother, Karin and Tom. She used to write a lot of Trip Reports on the DIS. Karin still shares their numerous journeys, but with a smaller group of folks mostly made of people she met on the DIS. The two are sitting on the left side of this photo next to Jill. They also do not like having their photos taken and you will not see many (or maybe any) of them in this TR! This photo dates back to 2018 when we all sailed on the Fantasy together.
So now you have a bit of background as to how the trip came together, here are the main details. I booked my tickets to Frankfurt on miles that Fran had on her American Airlines account. I flew round trip Business Class from LAX, with a stop in Dallas, where I picked up the International flight.
From Frankfurt, I took the train to Nuremberg, where I stayed for five nights, and then took the train to Linz, where I stayed for seven nights, and then returned to Frankfurt where I stayed in the airport hotel the night before my flight home. Magdalene was able to arrange my train tickets which was a tremendous help! As you will see I still have a few train mishaps, but nothing too bad!
Everything else was left up to my tour guides. They all did a fantastic job of keeping me entertained, fed, and keeping up my step count!
So let’s get this party started!
It was Wednesday morning, April 24, 2024. The alarm went off at 4:45. I'm getting pretty good at waking up for these early flights. According to my fitbit I went to sleep at 8:41PM the night before and immediately fell into a deep sleep. Not bad, I got about 6 ½ hours of sleep.
I had picked out my clothes for the flight several days before, so getting dressed was easy. No dilemmas there. Normally for my flights I would take a JUber (that's what we call Naked Jim when he drives me places). However just one week before, he had both his knees replaced so he was a little bit out of commission. Instead I asked my helper and cleaning lady, Donna, to give me a ride to the airport. I asked her to pick me up at 5:30, and she was early, better than late!
I fed the cats, made some coffee and then we were off! We were on the road by quarter to 6AM. The drive was fairly easy, and just after 6:30AM I was checking in and dropping off my bag. Evidently I neglected to add my Global Entry Passid to my ticket. At first I wasn't going to worry about it. I didn't have my number handy. But then I remembered that I had emails with my Global Entry and could access the number that way. I checked with the ticketing agent and he was able to add it to my ticket. Boy am I glad I did that, the regular line was super long!
He also told me that the Flagship Lounge was right next to my gate. I did not know that American had a lounge! I sailed through security and soon I was enjoying a “make it yourself” Bloody Mary as well as some fruit, salami and cheese.
My stomach is never ready for food early in the morning. Usually I need to wait a few hours before I'm actually hungry, so I just had a little snack. If I wanted I could have totally pigged out! They had everything from breakfast pastries to California Rolls, Lox & Bagels, eggs, tacos, sausage, oatmeal, and miso soup. There was more, but a lot of it was stuff I wouldn't eat, so I didn't bother to figure out what it was. I think it was roasted Brussel Sprouts and there was a weird pizza-like thing.
They had an entire full bar, a big selection of beers, wines, champagne, all self service!
I still had about half an hour before I wanted to leave to wait at the gate. My flight began boarding at 8:25AM and I decided I could hang out at the lounge until 8AM. So I poured myself a glass of Grüner Veltliner and sat at a table with a view of my plane.
At 8AM I left the tranquility of the lounge to wait at the gate. It was fairly chaotic and the gate agent had to keep telling people to back off from the gate. I was in Boarding Group #1 and it seemed like half the waiting area was in that group.
Finally I was able to board the plane. I was pleasantly surprised to find that First/Business Class had these pod style seats. It was a less than three hour flight and I did not expect this on the short haul flight. From Dallas to Frankfurt, yes, but this was a pleasant surprise.
Here’s me, pleasantly surprised about the seats on this plane!
I decided to watch Wonka, on the In-flight entertainment system. I thought it was rather amusing, not the greatest movie, but I do have to say Hugh Grant was amazing. When the beverage service came by I had a glass of white wine.
Later they came by offering breakfast. I passed on the breakfast enchilada which had cheese, corn, and egg. Instead I opted for the fruit plate with Vanilla Greek Yogurt.
I added the blueberries to the yogurt and topped it with the granola, and just ate the melon, pineapple, and strawberry by themselves. It wasn't a ton of food, but it would tide me over until I could get to the AA lounge in Dallas. I'm sure they have some great offerings as it is one of their hubs.
I finished the movie with just enough Time to visit the facilities before we began our descent Into Dallas and the captain turned on the Fasten Seat Belts sign. We landed on-time without incident.
I found the Admirals Club, and this was a sad club compared to what I'd seen in LA. The buffet had some hummus, pita chips, Greek salad, salsa, and some cheese cubes. On my second go around I discovered Chicken Tortilla soup and MInestrone Soup. So I had some of the latter. I got a glass of Chardonnay and ate my soup.
I really wanted to use the restroom, but the entire time I was in the lounge the ladies room had a sign on it that it was closed for cleaning. Luckily there was a companion restroom. I found a second buffet area as I was getting ready to leave. This one had some teriyaki chicken and a quinoa rice mix, but it didn't look very appetizing. I grabbed a few brownie bites before leaving.
Finally I leave the USA on this long awaited journey! Tune in to see how my visit to Bavaria and Austria turns out!
I know I don't leave you many notes 
but I always follow along with interest. Loving all your adventures!
Both! 
