Frankfurt Bridge

The Frankfurt Bridge, affectionately referred to as the Love Bridge, is known for a romantic tradition. Tourists traveling together may come with the intent to partake in the tradition or may discover the tradition after arriving and pop into a nearby shop for a padlock. Either way, most couples traveling through can’t help but join the thousands who have already locked-in their love for one another by ceremoniously attaching a padlock to the bridge and tossing the key off the side. Even if you choose not to partake in the tradition, you’ll enjoy passing by the countless locks. Take some time to stop and examine the details. Many of the locks have been engraved with the names of the couple and the date. The Frankfurt Bridge is also known as the Iron Bridge and is over 100 years old. You can see the change in water level over time by a second type of engraving done not by romantically infatuated couples but by the water of the river Main.

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Frankfurt Palmengarten

Discover the amazing world of plants at Frankfurt Palmengarten, the botanical gardens in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt Palmengarten is home to 50 acres of tropical trees, orchids and ferns. It was founded in 1868 after Prussian Duke Adolph of Nassau sold his famous “Biebricher Winter Gardens” to renowned horticulturist, Heinrich Siesmayer. The Franfurt Palmengarten’s exotic plants as well as concerts and balls soon made the Palmengarten a highly attractive center of social life in the city. The gardens were maintained through World War I, in which the greenhouses and grounds served as vegetable plots to supply military hospitals. Today you can visit the many sections of the Frankfurt Palmengarten, including the Great Pond, Rock Garden and Grotto, Baboo Grove, Blossom House, Palm House, House Rosenbrunn, Steppe and Prairie, Rose Garden, Water Lilies and Tropicarium, Subantarctic House, Succulent Garden and Entrance Hall Conservatory. Take a special tour while you’re there or just wander around. Children are welcome and the gardens have special tours tailored to their interests.

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Triumphal Arch Brussels

Cinquantenaire Park’s most eye-catching monument is the Triumphal Arch (Arc De Triomphe). It was built as a new gate to the city center for visitors entering from the eastern side of Brussels. The arch served as a monument to Brussels’s past. The construction of the Triumph Arch, or Cinquantenaire, was planned for the World Exhibition of 1880. However, the Arch could not be completed in time. In fact, the construction was nowhere near complete by 1880, only the base of the columns had been finished. While the exhibition was in process, wooden panels were used as a temporary solution to complete the Arch. In the years that followed, King Léopold and his government argued intensely about the arch’s completion. The government did not want to spend the large sum of money necessary to fulfill the king’s vision. In secret, the king provided the money from his own savings and the arch was finally finished by 1905—just in time for the 75th anniversary of Belgian independence.

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Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

Vienna’s natural history museum is one of the oldest, largest, and most noteworthy natural history museums in the world. The museum building construction was completed in 1889. Today it is home to a collection of about 30 million specimens and artifacts. Its collections were founded in 1750 by Emperor Franz I Stephan of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa. The museum houses a number of famous and unique objects. A perfect example is the 25,000-year-old figure of the “Venus of Willendorf,”a nearly complete skeleton of Steller’s Sea Cow, an animal that became extinct more than 200 years ago. The most recent addition to the collection is the Tissint Martian meteorite, in the modernized meteorite hall. In total, the museum has 39 galleries that are visited by well over half a million visitors each year. The Naturhisorisches Museum Wien also serves as one of the largest non-university research institutions in Austria.

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Nymphenburg Palace

Nymphenburg Palace, otherwise known as Nyph’s Castle, is a Baroque palace in Munich, Bavaria, southern Germany. When construction began in 1664, the Nymphenburg Palace site was on the edge of the court lands, to the west of the city, in a location which, at that time, was still some way out of Munich and surrounded by open countryside. The palace was built as a summer residence for the birth of the long-awaited heir to the throne, Max Emanuel, who was born in 1662 to the Bavarian Elector, Ferdinand Maria and his wife, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy. Over the course of a century the palace was expanded upon and decorated with the help of some of the world’s most talented architects and artists. With his witty, graceful Rococo gem, Francois Cuvilles the Elder, a Paris-trained architect, brought Munich court art to its peak of expression. The palace now ranks among the most charming European architectural creations of the period.

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