Heidelberg Day 1

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Travel Blog: Day 6 Heidelberg
Welcome back to the world that keeps spinning. We are now in the old town of Heidelberg.
This is a pretty old city, and very different from either Frankfurt or Cologne. I have now been to 3 different cities, and none of them have looked anything alike, its like you are in 3 different countries, but they are only about an hour on the train apart.
Things got off to a bit of a rocky start when we got here. When we got off the train, we noticed that it was pretty hot. We figured maybe it was just the train, but its actually 10 degrees hotter here, and the distance is like Elkhart to Indianapolis (probably even less). So we went down to the information station to look at a map and find our hotel… we couldn’t find it, so Josh went in and asked the woman. It took her a little while to figure out that our hotel was actually a 20 minute car ride from Heidelberg, even though it said Heidelberg on the address… basically it lied. Josh booked this one, so I gave him a good swift kick. We decided though that we did not want to stay that far away (although it was up in the mountain, which could have been neat), so we had the information lady find us the cheapest 2 person hotel with your own bathroom in ‘Old town’. It was pretty neat, she had a computer with her and it had all the hotels and who had open rooms and what price, it was like searching for one, except it is the perfect up to date system telling you everything.
The hotel room is small and different, but there is no AC, so sleeping last night was a bit difficult for me. We did our own walking around town, and I act as tour guide and we walked along the Necker River, which feeds into the Rhine. We went to a restaurant that had been recommended to me, which was excellent. It was a smaller place though, and there was a man there playing piano, similar to what you use to see in America. He wouldn’t sing, but just play the ditties. He asked if we had a request and Josh said Billy Joel, and he played a short medley of his songs, but they never ended, he’d play about 30 seconds of each then transition to the next. Still pretty fun and the food was excellent.
After that we mostly just spoke with people at the cafes and such (everyone here speaks very good English, because this is their main university town). We headed home a bit earlier than usual because we had big plans for today. Today we toured the castle, which was massive. I will post several of the pictures if I can figure out how. We did a guided tour (English) that was very informative, but she kept it fun so that the non-history buffs in the group wouldn’t be bored. It was quite the hike up to the castle though, as it was built on a mountain… but the view of the city was spectacular. Then we had some lunch and now we are just waiting around for the big game tonight between Germany and whoever they play… it was fun in Cologne when they played, so I expect more of the same here. That’ll do for today, tomorrow we are traveling to Munich, which I am pretty excited about, have a good one.
Ryan

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