Heidelberg with my Parents!

Hello All,

My parents are currently finishing up a three-week trip to Europe on which I got to spend two weeks traveling with them. They flew into Frankfurt, Germany, so we--Martin, his mom, and I--drove up to Martin's grandparents' house in Heidelberg to meet them and show them around that area a little.

 

That's just the entrance to the bridge!

 

Heidelberg wasn't bombed in WWII, so the old town and castle remain historically intact. It's a very pretty city situated on a hillside over a river, and most of the older buildings are made with local red stone, including the super awesome castle.

 

The castle, as viewed from the city below (note that the right-side tower is half blown up, that'll be explained in a moment).

 

Part of the castle's front and main living area. 

 

The castle's inner courtyard. Look at the cool red stone!

 

One time (pre-WWI) they stored some ammunition in one of the towers. It exploded. 

While we were there, there was a fireworks show on the castle and river, and we got to stand really close by and watch the fireworks shoot off of the old bridge, the castle, and even the river itself.

 

Heidelberg is also the home of the oldest funicular in Germany. And the newest! 

PS: a funicular is one of those really steep cable cars. Here's the wikipedia page.

And we rode that funicular!

 

In other important and historic news, Heidelberg has an insanely fabulous playground and lots of rowers! The playground has a whole water area where kids can manipulate the flow of water with dams, water wheels, and this really cool Archimedes screw that brought the water back upstream. In lieu of swings and slides, they had an insane tetter-totter thing, a spinning thingy of death, and other potentially deadly members of the "thing" family.

 

It spins and goes up and down!

 

Future hydroengineers. 

We had a great time exploring Heidelberg, thanks to Martin's mom and her parents who hosted us and made sure we always had plenty of cake at teatime. After Heidelberg, we traveled back to Liechtenstein for a quick repack before going on our road trip through Italy!

 

A sample of our delicious Heidelberg food. This pretzel is the size of a large pizza and each part has a different sandwich filling. Especially important because the bread in Italy wasn't nearly as good as it was in Germany.