Heidelberg Castle!

Saturday we drove to Heidelberg, which is a heck of a lot closer by car than by train. 30 minutes in the car and 45 minutes or 1 1/2 hour by train, depending on the route you take. We originally planned to leave by 10 AM, but that didn't happen. We did not even wake up until 10 AM, so we left the house by 1 PM. Go figure. As we were pulling into the city we noticed some construction on the road, which altered our Google directions a bit. Then we saw this delightful sign. This is one of the reasons I am not hip on driving over here. I don't know what I would do if I was driving down the road and saw this. What are all of the arrows for? Why is the arrow in the lower lefthand corner pointing towards another arrow?



Once we arrived in Heidelberg Lenea and I had to pee. We were so excited when we found a public restroom that was free. That was until we entered the stall and saw that it wasn't even a real toilet seat. It was simply painted on. I think I would rather pay 5o cents for a toilet, than use this one for free.



Once we parked the car we set off for a grand adventure to find the castle. The directions from Google had us parking right by the castle, but the construction threw us off and we ended up parking a little ways away from it. Not too bad of a walk, though. We were able to see more of the city that we hadn't seen, and the weather was gorgeous!



What a beautiful city! Mountains in the background and fun architecture on the buildings!!



The Rheine. I think I spelled that correctly :)

Another fun street with cobblestones.

Another fun part of our Saturday was seeing fraternities and sororities from the region meeting up in Heidelberg. The best part could have been the fun hats they were strutting around in. This isn't the best picture, but there hats were similar to pilot hats of various colors. Some of the hats looked like they had giant horns on the front of them. They were awesome.

If you walked through the gates, then you would walk over the bridge to cross the Rheine.

The path that leads to the castle. There was a metro train that lead up the mountain, but Elizabeth and I decided to walk it. It was a trek! I don't think you can tell quite how steep it was, but my calves were bumpin' by about the third step.

This was our view once we made it to the top of the trail that lead to the castle.

A view of the city from one of the windows in the wall that surrounds the castle.

Same view, just zoomed in on my camera for this one.

I really liked this wooden door, and of course the Germans had to graffiti it as the Germans do.

I like this one better :) You can't see all of the graffiti.

This pathway lead to the inner courtyard of the castle.

Another view of the pathway.

View from the window.



Playing with my camera settings. I am trying to collect black and white photos for my room.

This bad boy is located below the castle in the wine cellar. Believe it or not, there is an even bigger one of these on the other side of the wall. I couldn't get a clear shot of it, because the castle was overflowing with people. It may not have been the best idea to see such a landmark on a Saturday, but the weather was beautiful so it made up for some of the crowdedness.

Fun little wine guy on a wall in the wine cellar.

The sun was kickin', so several of my pictures appear to be glowing. These are two walls from the inner courtyard of the castle.

A sun dial and some renovations. Yay! In case you were wondering, the time on the sun dial was off by a couple of hours. Another problem with sun dials is that it requires the sun. If you were living in a sunny place (anywhere other than Germany), then this would not be a problem. We don't have a lot of sunny days in Germany, so I can only imagine how much fun they had with this fun invention.

Once we paid to see inside the castle, we found out that we were only paying to see inside the courtyard. If we wanted to see inside the castle, then we had to pay for a guided tour. Luckily for students, Elizabeth and I, it was only 5 euro total. For adults, Paul and Lenea, it was 9 euro. Not too bad considering this was a full day's worth of activity.

This is a mdel of the castle, as if you couldn't have figured that out for yourself. :) Look in the lower lefthand corner. The ramp going up to the castle is the donkey path Elizabeth and I walked to get to the castle. The previous picture is a view out to the gardens, which are located on the righthand side of the picture.

If you turn your head sideways (sorry for the inconvenience), then you will see the toilets. Thank God for modern plumbing. Can you imagine the smell outside?

The goodies that dropped from the toilet would have landed right where I was standing to take this picture. Joyful.

This is the gaming area, where they kept deer and other wild creatures for hunting. Look how green the grass is. I love Spring!

The other end of the gaming area.

This room is located directly above the ginormous wine keg. There is a direct line that taps into the keg for wine on tap. How elegant.

You can rent this room in the castle for birthdays, weddings, or any other shindig that you would need to invite 500 friends to.

Another wall in the courtyard, but this one shows how intertwined some peoples' religions were back in the day. The top layer has all of the Greek/Roman gods, while the middle floor is decorated with Jesus' closest disciples. The ground floor has all of the gods. I guess they just wanted to make everyone happy.

View of the inner courtyard.

This wall had deer horns mounted all along it in between the windows. The wall directly in view is a painted picture of a deer's body with an actual deer head on it. Yuck.

Awesome door. Unfortunately this is not original to the castle, but it is still pretty old.

Part of this tower collapsed. Whomp. Whomp. The walls were crazy thick. I could not imagine building something of this magnitude.

Walking towards the gardens...

The view of the city from on top of one of the walls surrounding the castle.

Pretty flowers in the garden.

You can't have a garden without the statue of a naked man in a fountain. It would be un-European.

Ahhh...the garden :) It was so green! People were lounging all over the place. I tried to avoid getting random people in my pictures as much as possible, but it was unavoidable at some points.

This wall surrounded the garden with an awesome forest on the other side. The German word for forest is wald. Kind of cool since our stop from the train is Kaefertal Wald. The only downer is that we aren't surrounded by an awesome forest like this. Boo.

More garden.

Crumbling castle.

Fun times at the castle. I have realized that I take way more landscape than people shots. Thanks to Lenea we have this people shot.

This was the walk back down, but on the opposite side that we walked up. We were a bit confused on the way down, but we eventually found our way to food and the car.

Today we had a lazy day filled with laundry and Greek food. Both Paul and Elizabeth had to pack for their upcoming trips. Paul leaves tomorrow for two months if the volcano allows it. All of the flights are cancelled for the time being. We are selfishly hoping his flight is cancelled so he can't leave us. Elizabeth leaves Tuesday for a conference with her school and will be gone until Friday. it will be a very quiet house with just Lenea and I. What will we do? I am sure we will figure something out :)

So sorry I have not updated the spring break trip anymore. I will do my best to get that completed soon. Until next time...