Speyer
I feel terrible that we weren’t able to give Speyer the full day that it deserves. There were some fascinating museums that we were not able to visit. We had discussed with Becks which city we should visit as we traveled south; we had narrowed it down to Worms and Speyer. His vote for Speyer was the deciding factor.
There is great public parking in Speyer. It is "pay and display," so make sure you find the machine. If you are lucky, someone will be leaving at the time that you arrive and give you their ticket. This happened to us, and we passed our ticket on to someone when we left. It is an easy walk to the cathedral.
The Kaiserdom is one of the most impressive cathedrals I have ever seen. Done in the Romanesque style, it is almost stark in its simplicity. There is no ancient carved choir stalls here; everything is very new, and I thought, very ugly. Yet, to some extent, it must be the most perfect example of what the interior would have looked like 600 years ago. The pews are metal, modern, and portable, and I could picture the cathedral so easily with them removed and all the medieval people standing in the vast open space.
For a peaceful moment, slip into the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament. The crypt is an amazing place. It houses the royal vault and four Holy Roman emperors and four German kings are buried here. The one you won’t want to miss is Rudolf of Hapsburg. Because it was January, there was the most amazing nativity scene that I have ever seen. People were literally in line three-deep to see it.
The treasure of the cathedral is housed in the Historisches Museum , which is just down the street.
There is a small gift shop along the way you will need to travel.
A large part of the history museum was closed for renovation, but if you have children, there was a Play Mobile exhibit that covered two floors of the museum, where there were what seemed like millions of kids. The treasury was still open, and we had to pay full price to visit only it. I entrance was, I believe, €8. You need to go to the basement for this exhibit, and the high points are all the items removed from the royal graves at the Kaiserdom. You can see the crown of Konrad, as well as hair sample of him and his wife, Gisela. There are little holes in the wall that you look through to see the skull and bones
and I think I did a good job of lining my camera up with the hole. Our problem was that there was no English guide, no English booklet, and no English commentary. No wonder my German is improving. Would I pay this price again? No, not unless the rest of the museum is open.