We each took one bag. That was it. We carried them on the airplanes and we had everything we needed for three weeks. We flew on May 1, 2009 from Salt Lake City to Cincinnati, and then changed planes and flew on to Frankfurt Germany arriving on May 2nd.
Our first meal in Frankfurt was west of town at a shopping center. We had fish and potatos.
This is at our hotel, the Frankfurt Marriott, and this black 2009 Mercedes-Benz CLC 220 CDI was our rental car. It had a 4 cylinder diesel engine, a six-speed manual transmission, and a nav system.
Sunrise from our Marriott in Frankfurt, looking at the main financial skyline.
We drove about an hour (90 km) to Heidelberg and there we saw a Nauticat with its mast down sailing down the Nectar River.
In Heidelberg we went to the Heidelberger Schloss or Castle.
Parts of the castle were built as early as 1214 AD.
These doors are fun to see, being very thick wood.
A nice vertical sundial was on the outside of one of the buildings.
An apothecary museum (Deutsches Apotheken-Museum) is inside part of the castle. Do you see the hanging stuffed crocodile?
Exterior of the castle.
View of the Nectar River and the old part of Heidelberg from the castle on the hill.
Inside the castle are several of these huge casks.
It began to rain as we walked down the hill from the castle to our car.
A view of the Mercedes speedometer at 200 kph, or 125 mph. This is a common cruising speed on the autobahn in the middle lane. We actually got the car up to 138 mph on two occasions. We never saw any accidents on the autobahn. We should get rid of our Draconian speed limits!
Here is a typical gas station with three grades of gas and three grades of diesel. These prices are in Euro cents per liter, so 100.9 would be about $5.25/gallon. Of course our Mercedes got 44 mpg (even while cruising all the time at 120+ mph) so it was not too bad.
Created: 27 May 2009 Modified: 3 May 2010