Frankfurt, Germany – The first ocean hop is complete. But how to deal with jet lag? My plane landed at 11:00 yesterday morning. I slept nearly the whole way. I don’t remember take off. We sat on the runway for a while. I wrote in my journal while the plane taxied. The next thing I know I am looking up at the map and we are flying over what looks like Iceland. Except, it wasn’t Iceland. It took me a minute but as I saw the mainland come into view on the map I realized we were over England! I followed the decent and was surprised to feel the wheels hit the ground at over 800 feet.  Ah!! – the elevation is according to sea level!

Chiara greeted me at the airport. I slipped into a nap around 1:00PM by mistake and slept for four hours. When I woke up I had no idea where I was! Frankfurt! That’s where! Last night I went to sleep around 10:00 PM, however the alarm on my phone that I had set the night before to make sure I got on the plane went off again, but this time at 2:30 AM local time. I didn’t go back to sleep again until after 7:00 AM. But it gave me an opportunity to work on my budget and catch up on NCAA baseball scores! (UVA was a winner 5-3 in the first game of the College World Series!)

Today, after a nice breakfast spread provided by Chiara, we visited an old monastery. I mean old in the European sense. It was built in the 1100s! Of course any good monastery must be complete with wine presses and beer barrels!

Passing through Bridgeport, CT on the way to JFK

Cistercian Monastery Eberbach

Apparently they make a good bottle of reisling around here

My hosts from left to right – Thomas, Julian, and Chiara

Huge-ass hall of old wine presses

Wine press behind me

View of the monastery from another angle