Heidelberg, Part Zwei

So yes, we have already been to Heidelberg, but that was in February and it was so nice... and for three Saturdays over the summer, the town "lights up" the Heidelberg castle and sets off fireworks. Well we missed the Fourth of July so it seemed a perfect reason to go...

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Some background: The castle lighting is done in memory of the three times when the castle went up in flames (1689, 1693 and 1764). The first two times were due to wars with the French, and the last time by lightning. After the castle was destroyed by lightning in 1764 it was deemed permanently uninhabitable and was left in ruins. This was a time when people did not care about the preservation of historic buildings and the citizens of Heidelberg helped themselves to the stones, wood, and iron from the neglected castle to build their own new houses.  It was not until 1800 when Count Charles de Graimberg began the difficult task of conserving the castle ruins.

So we took a train and stayed in a fantastic hotel (we were too nervous to try a hostel after our first experience with Kiwi) right on the edge of the historic old town.

our lovely room

Kiwi approves

bathroom

And then we set off sans Kiwi to tour the castle (we didn't have time last visit and no dogs allowed).

Along the way we passed the famous.... Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Heidelberg University, Ruperto Carola)

Founded in 1386, it is the oldest university in Germany and the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire.

Universität Heidelberg

and then we made our way up the steep climb to the castle

phew! rest break

castle entry

we made it!

view

view 2

view 3

the castle

seen it. Next!

so we learned that the English tour is hard to find (we never found it although we tried every entrance...). So we paid to enter the interior grounds that were cool but not really worth the extra money... the exterior and gardens are the best.

We did tour a cool apothecary museum inside the castle:

Apothecary Museum in castle

But consensus is, we could have skipped it and saved the money... :(

coffee time!

back to the hotel to collect Kiwi and regroup...

hotel roof deck, with castle view!

we decided to walk to a good viewing spot for the fireworks and per our resources, the best place is across the river from the old town... so we set off

view of the river

Alte Brucke (old bridge)

...unfortunately we learned too late that the bridge was closed because the fireworks set off from the bridge... so we could either cross at another bridge an indeterminate distance away or head back to our hotel to watch from the roof.  Since we were pretty tired from our earlier excursions and it was getting pretty crowded, and we had our unpredictable little monster with us, aka Kiwi, we opted for our roofdeck.

Although there were many other people on the roof with us, we had an excellent viewing spot but it turns out that it did not matter.  We could barely see a thing as the fireworks display was Very Low and hidden from view by the other buildings. :(

Ah, "the best laid plans of mice and men (and das Madchen and der Junge)..."

But on the positive side, when it soon thereafter started to rain and very heavily at that, we were already at our hotel and inside!

Next morning, we took a long lovely walk with Kiwi around the town and river

then luckily ducked into a restaurant, or rather under an umbrella... as a torrential downpour began!

beer makes everything better

where's my beer?

then we left for the train to learn that our train was cancelled and the train was combined with another train, which meant, our prepaid seat assignments were no longer valid... and as it was a full train...

this is where we sat:

so in sum, this weekend was a bit of a bummer...

but on the bright side, we can definitely, absolutely, positively, check Heidelberg off!