Mannheim; Friday, 31 March, 2017

Having stayed overnight near City airport meant that I could still be having breakfast in the hotel 90 minutes before departure. I checked out of the hotel and walked down to the bus stop to take the bus a couple of stops round to the airport, drop off my bags and wander through to the departures lounge.

The flight was called not long after I got through to departures so I wandered down to the gate to board. Unfortunately, a group of tourists had kicked up a fuss about not being able to sit together on a 70-minute flight from London to Germany and the airline had decided to cave into their protests, consequently when I went to board I was told that my seat had been moved from the back of the plane, where it should have been quiet, to the middle where I was surrounded by screaming babies (and given it was a small plane I knew they would be badly effected on final approach into Frankfurt).

As suspected a generally smooth flight was ended with a series of howls from the various babies as the plane made its final, and quite bumpy, approach into Frankfurt. After landing we taxied for the best part of 15 minutes to get to a stand, and then had a 10-minute bus ride back pretty much to the same place where the plane came off the runway.

Through immigration and luggage, I wandered down to the railway station to pick up the train. Due to the timing it was considerably quicker to head into Frankfurt city centre and come back out again rather than waiting a long time for the next direct train to Mannheim, so I did that.

In the end it worked out even quicker than I was expecting as the preceding train to Mannheim had been delayed on an earlier journey and rather than missing it by 20 minutes I was able to catch it with a couple of minutes to spare, so made it into Mannheim well ahead of when I was expecting.

I wandered over to the tram stop outside the Hauptbahnhof and brought a three-day public transport ticket before hopping on the tram out to the hotel to check in.

Once I’d dropped off all my stuff I headed out into town for a wander, with no particular destination in mind. I headed through town, past the main museum and then down to the Rhein riverside to take the views across the river. The river at this point forms the boundary of not just Mannheim from its sister city of Ludwigshafen on the opposite bank, but also the state line between Baden-Wurttemberg and Rheinland-Palatine, and the number of flags up indicated the two sides wanted to make sure people knew which side of the state line they were on.

I wandered down the river until I was into the harbour area, which wasn’t particularly interesting so I picked up a tram back round into Mannheim city centre via Ludwigshafen to take in the views over the two bridges.

After a quick pit stop for a very late lunch I headed over to the Water Tower, one of the main landmarks of the city for a look around the pleasant park space that the tower is in. As it was still quite early I decided to go on a sightseeing tram ride round the region. The number 5 tram runs as a circular route through the neighbouring towns out as far as Heidelberg before heading back, with the route running either side of the Neckar river. The full loop took just over 2 hours to complete and there were some very interesting views along the way.

By the time I got back into Mannheim it was starting to get dark so I grabbed a bite to eat before returning to the hotel.