Speyer is a nice day trip from Heidelberg, particularly on a rainy day. There’s a huge cathedral and a great Technik museum where you can climb on old Russian Antonov transporter planes and look close up at a bewildering array of fire engines, limousines, trains and submarines.
On the beer front, there’s the Domhof Hausbrauerei just behind the cathedral which serves up some rather bitter and interesting brews. The dunkles is very much like a Duesseldorf alt, albeit one of the less distinguished ones (Schloesser?). It’s got a bit of sweet crystal, but not too much. The helles reminded us of Young’s bitter, but fizzier – really rather refreshing when we got our heads round it. So, darker beers, on the bitter side, and worth the trip.
They don’t seem to get many English tourists, though, especially those under 50, so we attracted some attention from the locals who were trying to guess where we were from and why on Earth we were there…