Heidelberg

Our first night's sleep was great. I think we were all so exhausted from all the travel we could have slept anywhere. The room wasn't too bad, small but clean, smelled a little musty, but I canät complain. It was a bed. I think our only complaint was that it was quite cold in Heidelberg at night, and our room was pretty chilly. And despite promising online that our rooms came with linens, they did not. I had a sheet, and it worked, but I was a little chilly.

We slept in Thursday morning, till about 9 or so, so by the time we got up and on our way it was after ten. We stopped at a little bakery just down the street and had yummy pastries for breakfast. Then we walked around the city to explore. Heidelberg is a fairly large town, and within it there is an 'old city' which is where we were that includes a castle, some beautiful old churches and lots of pedestrian only walking streets.

The castle was up on a hill, so we had to hike up this loooooonnnnng flight of stairs, it was numbered in some spots and I think it worked out to more than 300 steps. We spent well over 2 hours exploring the castle. It was beautiful....it was a ruin so lots of areas of the castle had actually fallen away, but it added to the character. The grounds were large, with beautiful big old trees, statues, fountains and all sorts of neat little off buildings. It also gave a great view of the city.

We also visited the churches, which were both beautiful, full of neat architecture and paintings - one of the old churches had just undergone extensive renovations so it actually had old architecture but was all re-done in plaster. It was still beautiful and the plaster just gave it a modern look (although I still prefer the marble/stone look) :P

Oh! and there was a beautiful old bridge that went across the river (I believe the Rhine) which was really neat. There were trails on both sides of the riverbank, so we were able to cross the river, stroll along the banks, enjoy the architecture around us and then cross again further up. Very cool.

Then we spent quite a bit of time wandering in the pedestrian walkway - eating gelato, we found a cute little grocer where we bought apples and bananas for snacks and breakfast, and another cool bakery that sold GREAT sandwiches for 1.39 euros - which is very good. We even picked up some pastries for the next morning because we were getting up at 6 am and catching a taxi to go to the train station to catch a train for Munich.

Overall it was a very good start and relaxing...a good way to ease us in.

More to come.