Another great day.......

As usual, woke up early, had breakfast and was on my way.  Today I had a "free" day to do what I wanted in the Heidelberg area.  Based on the recommendation of the hotel owner, I took a few side trips into the suburbs of Heidelberg.  My first stop was the town of Schwetzinger...... a small quaint town with a very nice pedestrian walking area with many shops.  There is a famous castle here and huge gardens around the castle, but I did not take a lot of time to visit these though....... I was more interested in spending time in the town of Speyer.  Speyer is known for its Technik Museum, which has both indoor and outdoor exhibits of old cars, planes, boats, motorcycles and other "technical" advances in science.  I spent most of the afternoon here,
checking out all the exhibits.  I loved looking at all the old cars, dating back into the1920s.  Outdoors, there were airplanes that you could actually go into.  The highlight for me was a Lufthansa 747, that was way up on some kind of platform and you could actually go inside and see all the components and how it was built and operates.  There were also WWI and WWII planes and even a Russian Space Shuttle.  It was a great museum to visit and well worth the time I spent here.  After leaving the museum I went into the city of Speyer, walked around a bit, saw the cathedral, town hall, etc.  By 4:00 PM I left Speyer and stopped back at the hotel for a bit.  I rested here for about an hour and then went downtown to the Heidelberg Altstadt for dinner.  I walked around the pedestrian area, with hundreds of people, students, tourists, etc.  I settled on a place for dinner, called the Zum Roten Ochsen, or the Red Ox Inn.  I had some roasted beef, red cabbage and a potato dumpling with a Hefeweizen bier. The food was excellent and the place was packed, mostly with students.  After dinner, I headed back to
the hotel.