Book Ended

Today was a day that was nicely book ended.

We left Mannheim this morning heading further south to Baden-Baden however as we left Mannheim we were closely followed by a Mannheimer who didn’t like the fact that we were keeping to the speed limit on a single lane road. He showed his frustration by literally sitting on his horn until he was able to get passed us!

Thankfully he didn’t give our Peugeot 308 a nudge.

En route to B-B we detoured to Heidelberg, got the car safely tucked in a parking building and went sightseeing.

Having found the main street (Hauptstraße) we started walking down it looking at the many shops. It is a very attractive shopping area and it became apparent as we went along that this street was not going to end anytime soon, in fact it went on for 1.8 kms until the Heidelberg Castle which sat above the town came into view.

Having got to the end then there was only one thing to do and that was to walk back again! One shop that did catch our fancy was one selling Schneeballs (Snowball) which is a sweet short crust pastry which originated in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in the early 1700s.

The shop assistant gave us a in-depth description of how they first came into being

Also there were numerous shops selling pretzels most with a good number waiting patiently to be served.

There are many sayings that one sees on t-shirts but this one really caught my fancy

Don’t like me?

Fuck off

Problem solved

If only I had one I could have waved  it at that Mannheimer!

Into the afternoon we left Heidelberg to drive through to B-B but finding our accommodation was a challenge. The difficulty was that the GPS kept directing us through Zentrum (the very centre of the city) however this Zentrum is a car free zone so imagine the locals surprise when 2 oldies arrive into the pedestrian zone not once but in two occasions & they most certainly weren’t on foot!

On the second occasion we had had enough so I rolled down the window and started talking to a local who luckily could speak quite good English and asked how do we get to where we were wanting to go. He soon realised that giving us directions was not going to work so he jumped in the car with us and directed us to the accommodation.

Now that is what I call giving your city a good name and this Baden-Badener book ended the day in a rather more pleasant way than the aggressive Mannheimer started it for us.

We haven’t seen too much of B-B yet but it gives an impression of being a wealthy area if the quality of the housing in the area we are staying is any indication 

Kms driven in total: 217

Kms walked since arrival: 32.3