Oct 2, Sun.

We awoke in Mannheim to a beautifully clear sunny, cool day. A short walk to the bus and we were on our way to Heidelberg. The town is a beautiful town topped by a 700 year old castle at the top of the hill overlooking the town.

The castle was a residence until lightening struck it in the mid 1700's and rendered it uninhabitable.

Front wall of residence

We had a guide from Milwaukee who is a a graduate student in history at the university in Heidelberg. He was great....funny, interesting and ridiculously knowledgeable. The castle is famed for, among other things, the world's largest wine barrel, a 50,000 gallon barrel made from 130 oak trees.

Ted with wine barrel

There are beautiful views from the castle and a lot of history to be appreciated.

Of course the story we remember is the one of the Italian dwarf that was a drinking buddy of  one of the kings who had a reputation as being a total drunkard. The dwarf was known as Perkeo and it came to be known that the name derived from the dwarf being asked if he wanted a drink and he would reply, "perche' no?" (why not in Italian) which apparently was heard as "perkeo" which became his name.

Statue of Perkeo

There was also important historical information all of which we promptly forgot.
After the castle, we came back down to the town of Heidelberg. It was burned to the ground by the troops of Louis XIV and had to be rebuilt in the 18th century.

Town with castle above

The university has been present since the mid 1300's and is considered the best university in Germany and one of the best in Europe. We walked around the town with our guide then had some free time to explore before going back to the ship.

Amazing street performer. They maintained this incredible position continuously. We couldn't figure out how they did it.

It began to rain and we took refuge in a cafe where we had a beer and a snack.
While we were gone, the ship repositioned to the town of Speyer. We had a brief orientation walk into town which Dick opted to miss but I took the opportunity to wander through the very pretty little town and did some shopping where I bought a warm vest because the weather had gotten very cold. There were lots of people out and about because there was a street fair.

In the evening, the ship put on a German dinner with musicians playing German music and the kitchen serving some less than wonderful German food.