We just spent two great days in Heidelberg and the Black Forest. Our first day we went to the Castle but we made it up to the top right after the last guided tour that allows you inside of the castle. Everything pretty much closes at 6 but they did the last tour at 4 p.m. Even though we didn't get to see the inside rooms, the castle itself and the grounds are beautiful. The castle was amazing and very medieval. We also saw the museum of pharmacy and the world's largest wine barrel.
Heidelberg Castle
It was so interesting that the pharmacy museum was there so of course I had to ask why. Like a lot of building and landmarks, the museum was bombed during WWII. It was originally in Munich and after wandering for a while they finally found a permanent home for it there at the castle. Since the pharmaceutical sciences are very medieval in many ways I think it was a very appropriate home. Being the science nerd that she is, Miranda was IN LOVE with it.
Afterwords we walked around the old town of Heidelberg looking at old buildings. The university is spread out around the town so the town exists around the university. We saw so many old buildings and the Church of the Holy Spirit is magnificent.
M was still pretty tired and fell asleep early again. I had to wake her up to take a shower and have a sandwich. We had to go into the kitchen to do this. We had meat and cheese but we didn't have bread. The father of the house gave us some bread, which was really nice of him. This was our first Airbnb experience. We rented a room from a father and daughter. They were super nice and the room was large and comfortable.
On Wednesday we woke up early and we took the train to Calw, which apparently not too many Germans know about. Both the train station lady and the Airbnb guy thought it was weird that we were going there.
Calw is in the Black Forest so we were able to hike through part of it for at least 45 minutes or an hour. It was breath-taking and a little scary since we were the only ones out there.
Calw, and that's the Black Forest, just up the street
After the forest we had a really nice lunch at a French cafe and from there we went to the Hermann Hesse museum. Calw is all about Hermann Hesse. That is their "claim to fame' and they capitalize on it. The museum was extremely interesting and we learned so much about Hesse. I had read that he was a Nobel Prize winner for literature but I didn't know he was also a talented artist.
A note about German trains. OMG I had forgotten how clean and nice they are. I'm also glad I paid just a little extra for first class for our rail tickets.
When we got back to Heidelberg I told M that she wasn't going to go to sleep early again. We were on Day 4 now. So we walked through Old Town and had dinner at, of all places, a Lowenbrau Beer pub. At first I thought that was just a common German name, but then I realized it was the actual beer company.
After dinner we saw more buildings we hadn't seen before, the Jesuit church and the university library. We didn't get back to the room until 10 p.m. A first! We went to bed around 11:30, halfway through our trip and we were finally on a normal sleep pattern.
Today, on Thursday morning, we're on our way to Munich for more adventures.
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