Zu Heidelberg

For some reason Heidelberg has always captured my imagination so I was keen to spend a few days there and check it out!

I was glad I had printed out all my accommodation bookings and specifically asked for confirmation of rates when our hostel in Wurzburg tried to overcharge us on check out, but happily acquiesced when I showed them their email! Lesson one to remember for travel next time!

Brrrrrr it is chilly this morning, after having such a glorious weekend (I was in a tshirt and 3/4 pants yesterday), it's back to rain and ten degrees, so the scarf makes a return!

We caught a busy ICE train to Frankfurt, businessmen were everywhere; Mum was happy because she found a nougat croissant in the station for breakfast. I'm missing Melbourne coffee though, the machines over here must need a good clean, everything's pretty bitter.

If it's still raining when we get to Heidelberg, we might drop our bags off at the hotel and get back on another train, I'm thinking of venturing down to Freiburg to check out the black forest, but we'll see what the weather does.

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View from the bridge on the way over to the Philosopher's Way

The sun did come out so we checked into our hotel and put our walking shoes on once again. We walked around the Philosophers way, which was pretty steep but afforded great views of the Aldstadt and Heidelberg Schloss.

It was steeper than it looks - I swear!

View from the Philosopher's way over Heidelberg

Pretty garden up on the Philosopher's way, overlooking Heidelberg

Yummm! Its not exactly carrot sticks hey Ming?!

After a huge piece of cake for lunch (oh dear!) we needed to walk it off so we headed to an old medieval forest in the middle of a quasi suburb, even the road deviated around the outside of it, and there were some lovely magnolias on display. From there we walked down and through the university, along the river and retired for the day.

Imagine having this as your playground!

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Simon surprised me this morning with the news that he has booked to visit me in my Scotland-Spain leg of the trip, incredibly special and romantic (Chloe spews). I can't wait!

So today in Heidelberg, after getting lost again and deviating through a different area of the city, we made it to the Aldstadt (old city) and ended up doing some shopping as we meandered to the Markyplatz. It is a lovely area, with beautiful four storey buildings in the old style, cute little alleys at every turn and a quiet buzz about the place, we had a good morning exploring.

In the afternoon we trekked up to the castle (walking again, although the funicular looked pretty cool), got waylaid by a closed back entrance but once up there enjoyed the castle facade and garden area that overlooked Heidelberg, a nice way to finish the day.

Check out the little sheep on the hill! There was a little black lamb too!

One of Heidelberg's big churches

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A little place with so much to see!

The Aldstadt of Wurzburg had many things to see

Today was a day to wander Wurzburg. Being Sunday, nearly all the coffee shops were closed, so we hunted for a breakfast location - our choice ended up being a 100+ year old bakery for Brezeln and kaffee, there's not many bakeries that old in Melbourne! Our coffee shop wander took us all through the Aldstadt.

As the clocks around the city struck 10am, church bells pealed out in all locations; the city was almost deserted, I think Sunday Mass is well attended here.

A nice view from the bridge heading the back way to the fortress

We wandered around the city, taking in numerous beautiful old buildings, found a park area with little areas devoted to different garden types, highland, Japanese, rose garden, etc and hiked up to Marienburg Fortress.

Mum having a relaxing stroll through the park!

The Fortress was pretty incredible, it felt truly medieval, with two very solid gates on it's one entrance through the fortified walls. There were watch towers, a communal fountain as the water supply for inhabitants and even a dungeon where the only way in was through a hole in the roof. Upon entering we were freezing and it was a 20'C+ day, imagine being dropped into the dungeon in the middle of a European winter!

There's me at the bottom (for an idea of scale!)

Water collection and storage area

View of Wurzburg from the Fortress

Walking back along the bridge into town

From the fortress we went back into town for some lunch and had an incredible apple strudel with custard - mum's such a bad influence!

Then we looked at more sights but finished at the UNESCO Residenz palace, it was pretty amazing. For a pretty small city, it has an incredible amount of historic buildings.

The front of the Residenz - and only a small portion of it too!

Back gardens with statues at every side of the Residenz

Another side to the Residenz

Amazing buildings left right and squished between others!

Dinner was huge, oh my goodness, mum got a beer and duck special for 10Euro that turned out to be half a duck, split down the middle, two potato (I think!) dumplings each the size of tennis balls, a side of red cabbage (so vinegar-y!) and all swimming in gravy - not to mention the obligatory half litre of beer! Mine was turkey schnitzel in creamed mushroom and another sauce, with sour cream for good measure and side bowls of pasta and salad - oh boy! Needless to say we left a lot on the plate and slept quite well!

Tomorrow we're off to Heidelberg

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Location:Bahnhofstraße,Würzburg,Germany

A medieval town

Today's plan was to leave Munich, train to the medieval tourist town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, walk around for a few hours, have a nice lunch and then catch the train on to Wurzburg where we'll stay for a few nights.

Rothenburg was a quaint little town, surviving wholly on tourist dollars. The upkeep of the town and it's buildings was impressive, nothing was falling apart, almost every house and shop had fresh flowers growing in their window baskets and the streets were completely clean.

A typical street in Rothenburg

One of the main buildings - the twisted piece is the staircase!

So many houses and shops were all dressed up

You could walk along the town walls

Space was a premium so trees were pruned to lie flat along walls

A cute hotel

One of the special 'medieval' sites - Where's Wally for me

There were also some interesting modes of transport. While we've been in Germany, we've noticed that there are almost no cars that would be older than five years - and the overwhelming majority are what we would consider to be expensive brands, Mercs, BMWs, Audi's, Saabs, Alfas - boy oh boy! But these two were a little different

We tried the Rothenburg specialty, a Schneeball, bits of pastry rolled up into a ball, cooked and then covered in chocolate or other things, not my favourite thing, but interesting!

After a couple of hours walking around the sites we hopped back on the train for Wurzburg.

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Location:Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Fairy Castle Time!

View from the train

After figuring out our transport options we headed off to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles by train through rolling green hills, views of the alps and German villages with an awesome amount of solar panels dotted on rooftops.

Hohenschwangau Castle

We befriended a girl from Hong Kong who was travelling by herself for five days in Germany, she was snapping away with an SLR and a smaller digital camera, she was also heading to Rothenburg ob der Tauber the next day like us.

Hohenschwangau Castle

View of Neuschwanstein castle from Hohenschwangau castle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived at Hohenschwangau to pick up our tickets, managed to get on an earlier tour time (sometimes it does help to pay a bit extra to reserve tickets!) and rushed up to the egg yolk colored Hohenschwangau castle, it was a home of King Maximillian and his family, the 18th century opulence was still plain to see, the mural paintings on every surface have been carefully looked after.

Scenery from Hohenschwangau castle

After our tour, we began the hike up to Neuschwanstein castle, forgoing the bus up the hill, or adding our weight to the poor Clydesdales pulling carts full of people up the hill. We stopped half way for our previously bought strawberries and took in the view of the Bavarian countryside.

Everything is ever so green, with small villages dotting the landscape in between pastureland, it was a pretty special view to look over all of that and then look behind you at the Alps, dressed in snow. The other side of the Castle's view was just as spectacular, looking out over a lake and the Alps.

We toured Neuschwanstein, which is a pretty sad story in itself, never completed. Six weeks after King Ludwig's death (which came a day after the Government had declared him mentally ill and unfit to rule), the castle was opened as a museum.

In front of Neuschwanstein Castle

Inside the courtyard of Neuschwanstein, waiting for our tour

The amount of German money piled in to Neuschwanstein must have been enormous, his bedroom alone kept a team of four woodcarvers busy for four years, the wood sculpture above his bed depicted churches with intricately detailed spires, just amazing!

After the tour finished we headed back down the hill to catch the bus back to the train station and the train back to Munich.

We overheard one of the guides telling his group where the beat Bavarian food and beer was, at the Augustiner brewery house, where all the locals go. So we walked over on our return, managed to find it, and entered the busy beer hall, where 1L tankards of beer are the norm, pretzels adorn the tables and the conversation was rowdy! A chef was walking by as we came in, saw our confused faces, asked us something in German and upon our 'ahhhhh' he said 'English?!!!' with an amused face and led us to a table. The waitress was a no-nonsense, matronly type who was not impressed by the chef's interruptions to her job! I struggled lifting my 0.5L beer with one arm, she would reach two 1L tankards across a table and wait impatiently for the blokes on the table to notice, decide whose it was and relieve her of the beer - impressive strength!

And these were only the 0.5L pots!

Quite a bit of beer!

On wandering home, we passed a popular ice-cream spot and grabbed a yummy cinnamon flavor, it tasted like gingerbread dough, yummo!!!

Day two out!


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Location:Fussen, Neuschwanstein and hohenschwangau schloss, Germany

Off we go!

The majority of flights from Bangkok seem to leave around 8am, so you want to be at the airport before 6am, with a 1.5hr drive from Pattaya to the airport, means getting up at or before 4am! No good if you're writing emails until midnight - silliness!
Anyway, our flight was fine, arrived after 16 hours with very little sleep (but lots of movies under our belts!) to our little hotel in Munich and collapsed into bed!

Got a bit lost and wandered through a nice little park!

Day one in Munich was fabulous! We started getting a bit lost on the way to the Karlsplatz, thank goodness for map apps rather than guidebook maps of the city which aren't that detailed after all! 

We went through a little park that doesn't rate a mention in the guidebooks but it had such pretty flowerbeds of pansies, tulips, daffodils and such - very colourful! Tulips were on sale everywhere in the city, it made me think of you Gem!

Marienplatz

Marienplatz - a little wet

The little figures went around and around

 

 

We wandered through the city, some sights were under renovation, but the Marienplatz was great with the figurines on the Glockenspiel doing their thing at the 11am show.

Inner square of the Rathaus

We stumbled on the inner square of the Rathaus by following a walking tour and got a few nice pics!

We checked out all the food in sale at the stalls of the Virtualienmarkt (victuals market), the white asparagus is in Eason at the moment and it was everywhere! We picked up some juicy strawberries for later.

Interior of the Asam Kirche, a bit blurry

We found the Asam Kirche, an incredibly detailed interior, intricate paintings, ornate finishings and marble over everything else. 

The front of the Asam Kirche

It's wedged in between non-descript shops on a chic shopping road, a discount bakery across the road.

Found an incredible tea house, it puts the shops in Melbourne to shame - the smells were incredible!

On the way to the Parliament building - I'm on the bridge there!

Parliament building

We wandered onto Maximillian (sp) strasse, to have a squiz at the Bavarian Parliament building and followed the incredibly clear river (you could seethe rocks on the river bed below, compare that to the Yarra!) along to the Frierangel (sp) to take a few pics.

Friersangel

By that time a coffee and cake were in order so we walked back through the art precinct but couldn't find a nice bakery to save ourselves. Continuing on for another while, we passed the Residenz and ended up all the way back at the Marienplatz at a bakery we had seen earlier. Famished, we bought too much, that chocolate brownie of mine was huge and oh so rich!

After a much needed rest we decided on one last trek up to Konigsplatz, a square surrounded by art galleries and then made it back to the hotel for a good rest. 9am till 4pm solid walking, more than our trek to breakfast in Brizzy Ming! Mum was pretty exhausted, so we had an early night.

Day one out!


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Location:Zweigstraße,Munich,Germany