Mannheim; Sunday, 02 April, 2017

I didn’t have that much time left in Mannheim before I needed to start heading back towards Frankfurt for my flight home, but I did have enough time to visit the spectacular baroque palace in the city centre.

Once one of the most important palaces in Germany it’s importance started to wane after Mannheim was swallowed up into Baden, and these days a large part of the palace building is occupied by the University. However, a section in the centre of the palace is still owned by the state and is open as a museum both the how the royals of the time lived, but also covering some of the history of the city.

I had a long wander round the palace rooms and the exhibitions, making full use of the supplied audio guide.

From the Palace I wandered over the road to the nearby spectacular church with its domes and towers and had a look around that, before finally wandering back down to the market for a quick look round there before it was time to head back to the hotel, grab my bags and make my way back to Frankfurt Airport.

Back at Mannheim Hauptbahnhof I quickly found out that I could have had a bit longer as the train I was booked on had been retimed due to engineering works and was running nearly 30 minutes later than the time on my ticket, so in the end I spent quite a bit of time just sat on the platform waiting for it.

The train was one of Deutsche Bahn’s sleek ICE high speed trains, which was slightly defeated by the fact that between Mannheim and Frankfurt it has to run on the normal lines, but it was very comfortable for the 40 minute journey back to the airport.

Back at Frankfurt Airport I checked my luggage in and headed for security and the flight home.