Autumn bike riding

We have been so lucky here with the weather. I love this kind of Autumn - sunny, cool but not cold, beautiful colours. Yesterday was extremely nice. 16 degrees and sunny. I had a bunch of errands to run in the city and was also hoping to go to Ikea, so I decided to take my bike. (I posted about how annoying Ikea is to get to, much easier just to take my bike).

The trip into Frankfurt by bike is such a nice ride. The first part is through the fields on a paved path. Then you get into the city, but have your own bike path. The last part I stayed away from the main roads and instead went through some residential areas. Here I was able to follow bike roads (ie. designated roads for bikes, but you don't get your own path).

Part of the bike ride into Frankfurt, you can see the bike path :)

When I got into the centre of the city I stopped to enjoy the view of the Alte Oper, one of my favourite buildings! I also had a look at my map to see where I'd actually come. I decided to not look at my map the whole way in and just figure out a way. It worked well because I found a lovely way to come!

The Alte Oper behind some colourful trees

My bike, where I sat to look at the map

Then I did some errands, had lunch sitting by the river, did some more errands... It was crazy busy on the Zeil. There seemed to be a bunch of things going on. Japanese week was having some celebrations at Hauptwache. There was the market at Konstablewache. There were some protest kind of things going on in between and also at the Goetheplatz/Roßmarkt. I think because it was so nice, everyone was out. Lots of people were out walking or biking by the river. 

I then met up with Cara and we did some wanderings. I bought a purse to take with me when I go to Porto next weekend. We also looked at some boots. I feel like I have looked at so many boots I will never find any! Maybe if I wasn't so picky... We also looks into Karstadt, this department store. We were looking for tins of pumpkin to make pumpkin pie, but sadly didn't find any. I found some other things, including chocolate! I didn't make it up to Ikea. Thanks to Cara I realized I didn't have my receipt to exchange what I bought. 

The ride back was also nice. Took me longer because it is slightly uphill (but only slightly, nothing like Vancouver!). I was very leisurely and stopped to take more photos. 

Notice the dinosaur?

Back through the fields, with the sun near to setting