German Vacation: Part 3

The day after my birthday we left Frankfurt and headed to Heidelberg to find a castle.  It took us longer to do than we had hoped (how do you miss a huge castle on a hill?  who knows?!) but when we got there, the castle was impressive and worth the wait.  We began with an hour long tour that was mostly successful, though the guide had a heavy accent and didn't really adjust his patter for kids, but they were troopers until the very end, which was about as good as we could have hoped.  The history of the palace was fascinating, really, so many owners and so many different architectural styles and, in the end, so much destruction and waste that can't be restored.  A shame really, but beautiful to see all the same.  Also at the palace are two other sites: a GIANT wooden drum, or tun as they call it here, built to store and dispense a LOT of wine, because, why not?  And the German pharmacy museum, which we had to visit, of course.  It was very well done and the husband loved describing how all the apparatuses (apparati?) worked to the kids and they loved seeing the stuffed alligators hanging from the ceilings, because who wouldn't?  After all that madness, we took a modern funicular ride up to a wooden funicular which we rod even farther up, up, and UP until we were almost going straight up a vertical slope, or so it seemed.  Fun but a little terrifying.  The view from the top of the mountain was spectacular, though it was MUCH colder up there so we didn't stay long.  Then we took the funicular all the way down for lunch in the pedestrian area of town (the BEST beef goulash with spaetzel I have EVER eaten, by the way) and wandered around for a bit, succumbing and buying the boys wooden swords as souvenirs (because this trip was all about castles, after all).

Later than evening we drove to a nearby town for our next hotel stay, in a real hotel this time, and we went to the local grocery store to buy both dinner and breakfast for the next morning.  This hotel also had no air-conditioning but a huge window that opened all the way up, and it had gotten much cooler that day, so we all slept well.  The hotel did perplex me a bit, since it was huge but in the middle of a working-class neighborhood with no other like businesses around...and there were lots of middle-aged women with very teased hair staying there for no obvious reason...but our room was comfortable and the hotel was quiet, so good enough for me!