Trip 40

Day 1

Today starts our second Christmas markets trip to Europe. It’s a busy itinerary, with stops in Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich and Zurich. We’ve been to all of these cities before, some as recently as this past September, but not to Christmas markets in all of these cities.

Traveling two days after Thanksgiving, we were concerned about the crowds at the airport. Granted, we got to the airport 4 hours early to spend some time at an airport lounge, but found the airport not at all crowded. Clearing Pre-Check security took 2 minutes.

One thing that hasn’t changed for us over the last few years is wearing a face mask. While it’s no longer required on airlines and you don’t see a lot of people wearing them in the airport, we’ll still wear one on the 9 1/2hr flight, public transportation and when in close quarters in the Christmas markets. Between the resurgence of seasonal flu and winter bringing new variants, precautions still in order for us.

Boarding used a new (to me) process involving facial recognition, where there was no check of boarding pass or passport, just my lovely photo.

The departure from DFW was on a drizzly overcast day, but once airborne, we flew seemingly just above the clouds at 34,000’ , East into the encroaching darkness, headed for Frankfurt. Scheduled to arrive about 8am.

We’ve never visited Frankfurt, the city, only transited the airport, so some new territory for us. The airport is absolutely enormous, but fairly easy to navigate to the train station after changing terminals from our arrival Terminal 2 to Terminal 1.

When we were in Munich in September , we took the time to find the Federal Police at the Munich airport (bit of a challenge) and register for using the E-Gates when going thru passport control. Wow! Was it quick!