I woke up by accident just before 6am. Since it doesn't happen often, I took a picture. Mannheim is a young city only 400 years old. Also known as the city of squares. Not a medieval city by any stretch, very few medieval buildings Insurance company with one of the tallest buildings. First a castle then a palace - now a university all in one; 25k students and 1400 windows. The Palace was originally in Heidelberg but the prince wanted a new modern palace so he mov...

As you may know, I am not an early bird. I don't rush through morning ablutions and prepping my bulletproof coffee on a ship of any size takes time and coordinator with the bar staff. So when the tour off the ship starts at 8:15, I just can't get ready on time. So instead of joining the tour, we were up top of the ship on the sundeck, wondering what the city looked like away from the river, and two little ladies with canes decided to get off the ship and said why...

Slept late again! While having my morning coffee the cruise director gave a talk about beer.. there are 4 ingredients water, hops, yeast, and malt . He said the hops is related to marijuana in terms of increasing mood - if you are happy you get happier. If you are sad, you get sadder. England has the highest alcohol content of beers. Here in Germany young kids drink beer with parents, legal drinking age is either 16 or 18. There are different sizes and shapes of ...

We started at 9am from Genova, took the train to Milano, changed trains at Basel for Freiburg, and lo - at the train station waiting for us was Lotte!! We walked to our hotel, then to a restaurant where Joey could have bratwurst and sauerkraut- the restaurant was southern german food. The salad dressing was sweet, the bread stale, the chanterelles cream soup was quite salty. I ordered grilled trout and it was lovely! I didn't try joeys bratwurst or sauerkraut but...

Today was a day of reorganization. We changed rooms in our hotel, I realized that I had sent home all my long black pants when Joey and I packed up a suitcase and mailed it home from Venice, So I tried to go out totally cool store and buy some new long pants- But after trying on clothes for about an hour it turns out they couldn't hem them until Monday (and we leave town on Sunday) so I walked away. Tom and Serene at that point took the train up to Horb, Germany ...