Monday, Day 8

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Here begins my review of Heidelberg. Rick Steves and I would normally avoid this place (too touristy) but I'm very happy I decided to stop here. Why? Elizabeth loves it, that's all I need to say.

I will explain why Elizabeth likes it so much this way: when we were in Paris I had to lead us around because Lizzie was totally lost (not completely true) EXCEPT when we went into this huge department store. And I do mean huge. The place was six stories high and made up of two buildings. What made it worse - it isn't divided into departments like Womens, Juniors, Casual, Shoes, etc. Each brand actually has its own section. So instead of walking past one Women's, and one Juniors and one Shoe department, you keep passing them over and over again in this mass sea of women's clothing and accessories (I have no idea where the men's clothes were, maybe in the other buiding). But guess what! When we were navigating through the store to try to find something Lizzie had picked the day before, she made all the right turns- while I kept trying to lead us astray. She was like a bloodhound on the path. So to say she liked Heidelberg (which is one loooong shopping street) is an understatment.

So after a fairly short but fruitful excursion down the shopping street, we rented a car and drove to Rothenburg. It was a very nice scenic drive along the Necker river. We stopped in a nice little resturant and had a wonderful meal. We reached Rothenburg just before nightfall, but managed to find our gasthaus anyway. It was on a street so narrow that it didnt matter that it was under construction- we couldnt have driven down it anyway! After waking Frau Liber and dropping our bags off in our room, which was actually a very roomy apartment, we went in search of a late night snack. Elizabeth and I have been taking turns choosing (guessing really) what to order for dinner. I thought i would play it safe, since it was an italian restaurant (our only choice at 11 o'clock at night) and ordered the three cheese pizza. I think that is where i made my mistake. Maybe it would have been okay if it were a two cheese pizza. But one of the cheeses smelled so bad - Lizzie likened it to the piles of manure we had driven by recently - that we couldnt eat it. I told her this must be where the expression "who cut the cheese" originated.

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Photos

Elizabeth makes a friend
Shopping in a giant teddy bear store- suprisingly these types of stores are common!

Shawn the sheep
(elizabeth has an inside joke about him with her brother Christopher)

Manhole at the village gate
This was for when the gates closed and for the people who were out past curfew. To prevent letting bad guys in, they would only let people through the man hole, which fit onlymlne person at a time