Europe - a whole different story

Saturday - 20 Sep 

The start of this day was just the continuation of a very long Friday. Our late flight to Frankfurt continued the difficulties of earlier. The good news is that all our baggage arrived fine from the Azores. And we upgraded our vehicle situation to one mini van instead of two cars. But it took us forever to find our rental van. It was a huge parking structure. We walked what felt like forever and still couldn’t find the van. So exhausted, some of us sat down on the curb and Camille ran up and down the parking structure with the fab trying to get the van to respond. She had pressed it so much that the battery ran down. But finally, by going in a counterintuitive direction, Spencer and Camille found the vehicle. 

The van itself was really nice; a Volkswagen Multivan. It has middle seats that turn around so that the back passengers face each other and can easily carry on a conversation. It also has full electronics, navigation, bluetooth phone, media player, etc. The navigation has really come in handy.

So we finally got into the van and headed towards the address of our hotel, which we thought was in Heidelberg. It turned out to be about 20+ minutes from Heidelberg and was closed by the time we got there, around 2:00 am. So here we were in Germany with no place to sleep for the night. 

Fortunately, Spencer was very creative and called his base to see if they would have some accommodations. And they did have a four bedroom apartment available. But it was about 2 hour away. So we got to the base around 4 am. Again things worked against us as Spencer was only allowed to have 4 guests on the base. So that left two of us unable to get ot the apartment. Again Spencer came through by having Gayle and I sleep at his house while. So we were dropped off at close to 5 am and the rest went onto the base apartment.

Spencer's House

The others slept until about 12 pm, while Gayle slept till 1 or so and I slept until almost 3 pm. So it sort of shot the day.

Spencer left Cindy, Camille and Jenny at the base “mall” while coming to get Gayle and I. He got a friend to come and sign Gayle and I into the base. We ate lunch at a German restaurant and it was delicious eating the  national favorites like schnitzel,  bratwurst, and sauerkraut. It was wonderful.  

His little village is quite quaint and the house is just right for Spencer and Black Betty. It is set in a farm-like village, with farm a short walk from his house. The houses are close together and the streets and sidewalks narrow. Spencer has to stop to let traffic coming the other way pass, as people park partway on the sidewalk and part on the street. We had a tour of Spencer’s house, and, after much debate, went to Heidelberg.

Snitzles

 

Heidelberg was absolutely amazing at night. We ended up at a public square around the large cathedral of the Holy Ghost. There were many restaurants, pubs, ice creme places and shops still open, though not as many as during the day. We had a “gelato” or ice creme. The ones on cones were shaped like a flower with the ice creme flowing into the petals.

The church was the one where Theron’s grandfather was baptized. But we couldn’t go into it and take the tour, so we decided that we will come back to Heidelberg on our way back to Frankfurt and leave earlier in the morning from Paris on Thursday.

Our hotel turned out to be OK. We had 2 rooms, each with one queen size bed and a couch that made into a twin bed and a cot that rolled from underneath. The beds  situation seemed to be acceptable to all.