Today we woke up to a mercifully cloudy sky and cooler temperature – for the first time since we’ve been in Germany it was under 27 degrees.  We packed our bags, settled our hotel, said our goodbyes to the Mosel Wine Valley and headed to the train.  At Koblenz we hopped off to catch our connecting train to the Baden-Wurttemberg city of Heidelberg for our next set of days.  For those of you who believe that German trains run on time – they don’t.  Our train was 30 minute late today, and the train on our platform before that coming from Zurich was even later.  At about 1430 hrs after an unremarkable journey through Bingen, Mainz and Mannheim we wandered off the train and into the ancient university town of Heidelberg.  We hired a very friendly cab driver who dropped us off at our hotel, Goldener Falke.  We felt like we hit the jackpot – a beautiful 19th century building with a restaurant and patio on the ground floor and faces out into a main square filled with cafes, a cathedral, and a fountain.

One big difference that we’ve noticed between Heidelberg and the Mosel Valley is the number of tourists.  We sat in the square this afternoon to take a breather from the previous 4 busy days and watched many tour groups come through and heard many different languages spoken.  Pa and I had a couple of Heidelberger beers (another pilsner) and I wrote out some postcards.  

We had an excellent dinner of coq au vin, beer and strudel at the hotel restaurant, took and stroll around the square and turned in to watch some BBC news.