Rhine Cruise - Day 4, Speyer/Heidelberg

View of Heidelburg from Castle

Today we arrived in Speyer while we slept, so after breakfast we boarded our tour bus for Heidelberg, Germany. We toured the Heidelberg Castle, which is sliding down the hill toward the university town. The town is where the Heidelberg Confession was written.

View of Heidelburg from Castle

Monument opposite town from Castle

View of Castle from University Square

Cathedral in Heidelburg

Oldest building in Heidelburg

After dinner we walked to the Speyer Cathedral and through the old town. I think Speyer is where the Reformers were first called Protestants.

Speyer Cathedral in the rain

Pilgrim statue

Day 6 - Cagliari

On this day we went to the town Cagliari on an island called Sardinia, which is right off the coast of Italy. We did not have anything that we really wanted to do in the town, so we did not get up very early. After we ate breakfast, we got off the ship, and decided to walk up to the castle on top of the hill, because that was really the only interesting thing there. There was not really a whole lot to see in the castle, it was pretty big, but there were really only four walls. The castle had a good view from the wall, but where we spent the most time was going to a museum inside of the castle. The museum had things from the island that were collections that people on the island used to own. There collections were tapestries, lace, dolls, and a couple of suits of traditional outfits. After we saw that part of the museum, we went down into the basement, where there were models of the castle and the town from 3 different time periods, and cisterns from the Roman empire. After that we went back to the ship, ate lunch, and went swimming (there was a water slide in the pool), then we ate dinner.Joshua, Rachel, and Stephen in the pool

The water slide was a lot of fun!

This castle has a lot of steps

The model of the castle in the museum.

A suit of the full-sized clothes.

Handwoven donkey blankets

Mommy and Daddy walking at the wall of the castle.

The dolls were dressed in clothes like they used to wear.

Day 5 - Pompeii

On Day 5, we took the train from Naples to Pompeii. Naples is a very dirty city and there was a long walk to the train station. When we got to Pompeii, we got off the train, got tickets and went in. Pompeii was a resort city for Rome, meaning that the Roman citizens had vacation homes there. Pompeii was destroyed in 79 A.D., when the nearby Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Pompeii was a very perverse city when it was destroyed. People would just throw their trash into the streets, so they made the fountains overflow to wash out the streets. Because of this there were sidewalks for pedestrians, and large stones were placed in the streets for people to cross the street, and the chariots could go over them. Like in Rome, there were temples to everyone they could think of.

The people in Pompeii probably did not know the destruction was coming. There had been some earthquakes, but there had been earthquakes before. They probably started that day like they would have started any other day. They ate and drank and were merry, not knowing that they would surely die.

We walked through the streets and looked at some of the buildings. Many of the houses were well preserved, and in some you could still see mosaics. Pompeii had it's own amphitheater, and a house where they trained the gladiators. It was very much like Rome because it was a Roman city. Here are some pictures:

The entrance to the city

Mount Vesuvius as seen from Pompeii

Me giving a talk on Pompeii

Pillars from the temple of Jupiter

Ancient Crosswalks

An original drain

Pillars from one of the temples

Daddy in Pompeii