2020 - Day 13: Technik Museum Speyer

The summation of today is that queuing is never fun, but sliding down from an aircraft is!

After a hearty traditional German breakfast of bread, meat, cheese and fruit served from a socially distanced one-way buffet, it was time to hit the road for the 180km drive from Rothenburg ob der Tauber to Speyer.  The majority of the journey was on the autobahn and we were parked up at the Technik Museum Speyer within two hours of leaving, including a quick toilet stop for Paloma.

A few months back once we had a rough route in mind for our return west Amber started to search for places for us to visit and the sister Technik Museums in Speyer and Sinsheim were both added to the tentative list, but with Speyer home to the Spaceshuttle BURAN and also the the famous elevated ex-Lufthansa 747, Speyer on this occasion trumped Sinsheim (although I would like to visit the other museum one day to see the Tupolev TU-144 "Concordski").

Technik Museum Speyer.

The museum is split into three main areas.  First is a large indoor hanger with a mix of different vehicles and aircraft from across the globe, then the outdoor space with the aforementioned Lufthansa 747 and other commercial and larger military aircraft that are on display.  This area is also shared with a number of sea-craft, including a German U-boat submarine that was interesting to visit.

If the Red Arrows had ever flown Alpha Jets.

A classic BMW.

A selection of Forrest's photos.

A selection of Forrest's photos.

Inside the U-Boat.

The museum has aircraft from across the globe.

The museum has aircraft from across the globe.

The final area is the Space Flight Exhibition "Apollo and Beyond" with the centrepiece being the Russian BURAN Spaceshuttle.  Dating from the height of the Cold War, the BURAN was the Russian equivalent to the NASA Spaceshuttle.  The BURAN is only open for one hour windows so we decided to queue up for the 2pm slot, only to find a very long queue already in place.  With the kids struggling to queue without disturbing everyone else close by I took Forrest to see a few of the other exhibits whilst Amber kept our space in the queue with a less troublesome Paloma in the absence of her brother.  We finally reached the front of the queue and walked up the long steps to see into the spaceshuttle.  To be brutally honest it probably wasn't worth the 30+ minute queue for the view of the loading bay, and with hindsight we should have waited for the 4pm window since by this time the museum was much quieter and there was practically no queue at all to visit the shuttle!

The BURAN Spaceshuttle.

Forrest and Paloma with the BURAN.

Inside the BURAN Spaceshuttle.

A model of the Apollo 11 moon lander.

Up on the roof of the Space Flight Exhibition.

The 747-200 arrived at the museum back in 2002 when it was withdrawn from service by Lufthansa and instead of just parking it like at most museums, Speyer have hoisted it up onto a stand 20 metres in the air banking left over the main museum building.  As well as being able to walk around the aircraft it is also possible to walk out onto the wing and most exciting for Forrest and Paloma is that once you have finished looking around the aircraft you can take a tunnel slide back down to the ground to avoid the need to use the steps.

On the wing of the 747 high above the museum.

On the wing of the 747.

Rear bulkhead of the 747.

The kids with the 747 slide in the background.

It was gone 5pm by the time we left the museum so everyone was quite relieved that our hotel for the night was just a few minutes drive away on the outskirts of Speyer city centre.  After some quick research we found a good sounding Italian restaurant only 10 "Google minutes" walk away, so 20 minutes after leaving the hotel with Paloma walking all the way, we arrived at Donna Mia.  Just like last night the food was very good and the kids behaved well again, so well in fact that we even had some dessert!  By the time we left the restaurant it was close to 9pm, so to speed up the journey Paloma had a shoulder carry and without too much fuss once back at the hotel the kids were in bed and asleep.

Our antipasti at Donna Mia.

Walking back to the hotel through Speyer.

Blogged by Matt.