Hatfield European Adventure, Part 2, 2016: On the road again...09-03-2016

Today we said farewell to Rothenburg and headed for Heidelberg. I have been bragging to my brother about the excellent train service in Germany. Always on time, always on schedule. That was before we had a slight delay traveling from Berlin to Rothenburg. A minor delay. No bearing on our trip. Today, however, I was somewhat concerned when we had 4 minutes to change trains after we left Rothenburg for Heidelberg, with two train changes. One in Steinach and another in Ansbach and then Stuttgart. The one that concerned me the most was the 4 minutes we had to change trains in Steinach. However, we made that change without a problem and had 1 minute to spare. Smooth sailing after that. Right? Not so fast. We arrived in Stuttgart and had 20 minutes before our making our last connection to our destination. The train was due in at 10:06 and we were scheduled to depart at 10:07. The train did not show up. There were several announcements in German and some information ribbons going across the scheduling board. I told Larry, Pat, and Linda that I felt this was probably information we needed. There was a young man next to me and I asked him if he could speak English. Thankfully he did. I asked him what did the message say? He said that our train would be delayed 20 minutes. That presented another problem. We had an eleven minute change in Stuttgart. No way to make the train for our final leg. We were able to get on another and arrived at our destination about one hour later.
We checked into the Zum Ritter Hotel. A 15th century hotel that I stayed in on one of my first trips to Germany in the mid 1980's. It is one of the most photographed buildings in Heidelberg. We checked in, had an early dinner, and turned in for the evening. Tomorrow we visit the castle. More about the city and the castle tomorrow.