Heidelberg

Best castle I've been to.  Including Neuschwanstein.  As cool as everything else I've seen in Germany, this may be the coolest single building that I have visited.  Erik, Justin, and I took a day trip to Heidelberg on Saturday

to visit the Heidelberg old city just for something to do.  A large group of our friends were in Munich this weekend and we had decided to not go.  Heidelberg is only 45 minutes away (by car..) but was about 2.5 hours away by train.  We got there at about 2pm after making a wrong train-stop exit and then walking to the next one
(side note - Bruchsal seems like a nice small city from what we walked through...).

Our goals for the afternoon were to see the old city, market square, churches, etc. and then make our way to Alte Brücke and finally the Schloss ruins, garden, and courtyards.  We found an Irish pub to sit outside at and have a nice lunch around 2:30 - Erik and I split a pitcher of (hard) cider since it was such nice weather and I had a bacon cheesburger - the best and closest thing to a true burger I've had here.  I really can't wait for some Five Guys back home!!!  Also - they give really small portions of ketchup here because most people eat mayo with fries instead (gross) so we asked for a bit more ketchup.  The waitress had to go 'ask'! and then came back with a tiny dish of more. We found out later that we were charged $0.50 for the extra ketchup and had a good laugh about how that would never happen back home.

After the pub we walked along the Hauptstrasse - main street- which was mostly shops and restaurants, scattered around and dotted with some churches and hotels.  We then made it down to the river and saw the bridge from a bit off... I took a few shots with my camera that will go together into a panoramic shot once I figure out how to blend them together.  Then we walked to the bridge itself, took photos of the gate, historical water levels of the Neckar river, and the castle up in the distance.  The monkey shown at right here is not the original, but a reproduction of what used to exist on the bridge -













 A statue of a monkey holding a mirror so that both the richer city-dwellers and the peasants who lived outside the city would remember to look over their shoulder as they crossed the bridge... so to say that 'no one is better than one another'.  At least, that is how the lore goes that I've heard.

The castle itself was breathtaking.. can't even explain it.  So many beautiful ruins and gorgeous views from above.  We went through the garden and courtyards, but not through the castle tour itself (we were running out on time before out train home).  I URGE you to go to my flikr page and see the shots of the castle - they are so amazing! (flikr.com/bucky91 or link at right of page)  Here's just another shot or two..