Heidelberg

In Heidelberg, we got to stay on the Executive Floor of the Marriott hotel...we got a really, really good deal I guess. So it was pretty cool to be able to go down to the little lounge and get free drinks and snacks.  Funny thing was that we had the same stuff in our mini bar and we would have had to have paid for that...go figure!

We started our morning in Heidelberg with a mile or so walk along the river to the Karl-Theodor Bridge.

Addison posed by the famous Heidelberg Bridge Monkey which is a remake after the first one was destroyed in the Palantine War.  A plaque next to the monkey says, "Why are you looking at me? Haven't you seen the monkey in Heidelberg? Look around and you will probably see, more monkeys like me."  Well, Addison is our little monkey.

The towers at the edge of the bridge are really cool.  The bridge is just for pedestrians now as to preserve the few sculptures that are on it.

We headed into the "old town" to check out the Markplatz (market square). The Heiliggeistkirche (Holy Ghost church) was so pretty had little market vendors on the outside in which we found our Heidelberg Christmas ornament.  

From Universitätsplatz and the old university, we got our first good view of the castle.

We wanted to get a great view of the city and see the Heidelberg Castle so we took a ride up in the 

Bergbahn up the very steep hill.

At the top we got great views of the city.  I love all the red roof tops.  It was a bit hazy so you can't photograph things very well out in the distance.  Addison was obsessed with looking in the telescopes, but she had fun with them even when we didn't put money in them.  We got to eat lunch at the top of the hill before heading down to the castle.

We got one of the audio tours that Kevin and I shared between us to get the low down on the castle and found some pretty cool things.

This is probably one of the world's largest wooden wine casks.  This is in the cellar of the castle and the king would use it as a means for the local farmers to pay taxes to him.  Instead of money they were to bring a certain amount of wine that they produced and dump it in the cask.  Now with a combination of hundreds types of wine it was said that the concoction did not taste very good.  When I was taking my turn to look around and walk on top of it, I actually heard a young guy say, "How did they get it in here?"  His friends mocked him by saying...duh, it was built in here...what a tool!

The building behind used to house knights and one day it caught on fire.  Legend says that one knight jump out of the window and landed so hard that he left his heal mark in the stone.

One of the living quarters was designed by a particular architect who had a tragic story.  As he was constructing this building his twin sons fell to their deaths one day while playing on the scaffolding.  He was so grief stricken that he couldn't bare to continue.  One night he had a dream that his two boys came to him as angels and told him not worry about them and continue on.  He had not yet designed the door's head piece so he made it of his two sons as angels.

This little door inside the big castle gate doors was legend to be attacked by a witch who was so mad that she couldn't get in that she bit the ring and you can see the bite marks on it today.

This towers wall just gave way one day...hard to believe since it about 3 meters thick.  Poor engineering I think.  Anyway now it has been taken over by nature and actually looks really pretty and exposes the rooms inside.

While the kids were asleep we took the opportunity to enjoy a bit of the gardens.  We found a guy who looked like he knew what he was doing with a camera and asked him to take our picture.  Well, one he grabbed it he started messing with all the knobs and buttons.  He could tell we had know clue what we were doing with it and seemed somewhat disgusted that he couldn't get it set up for his ideal picture.  We were just happy to get a picture with us in it at a normal size and not have to crop it later.

I thought this sculpture was pretty cool.  Me and Zeus hanging out.  These gardens were meant to be one of the famous major "wonders of the world" but they were never completed.  

We interrupted Addison's nap too early so she was not a happy camper and it was going to start raining soon so to calm her down I tried getting her to pose in a picture with the castle.  It kind of worked, but I had to carry her for about a 1/4 mile as we walked back to the hotel.