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TRAVEL BLOG AND ITINERARY
a travel blog
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Friday night, the gang rented a 2007 P.I.M.P. Mercedes and headed to Heidelberg. Andrea was lucky and was required to take two portions for the Social Studies Praxis Exam, and the second part had to be scheduled for Heidelberg. We left that evening and arrived at the Heidelberg Army base where we spent the night...all seven of us...in a room with two twin beds. Shhh...
Saturday morning we got up and drove to the Heidelberg Castle. Although it too is considered ruins, it blew the other castles out of the water! It was gorgeous, inside and out, landscape and all. There was a lot of land outside which was originally used as artillery and canon grounds, but somewhere down the line, the resident decided to make it more "visually appealing" for his wife and turned it into gardens, the size and likes of which had never before been seen in Europe. We learned all this on a tour we took inside the castle. We learned about all the residents, the multiple destructions and reconstructions, the exotic animals that used to live there, the history of certain rooms, etc. One of the former residents who didn't live very there for very long was very into food and was so fat by the time he died that he had to be carried around on a chair by eight men. It was all very neat and intriguing!
Another part of the castle was the wine cellar, which holds the world's second largest wine barrel in the world, holding 55,000 gallons of wine! We were able to climb up a flight of stairs to the top of the barrel, among other things. In front of the barrel is a statue of a midget on the wall, who was the guardian of the barrel and known for enjoying food and drink!
On our way back home for the night, we stopped in Bad Durkheim, one of the famous cities along the "wine trail." We sampled a couple wines in one of the stores, and I definitely want to go back and get one! It was such a smooth, rich, delicious merlot. Mmmmmm. There was a restaurant outside the wine store which was a huge wine barrel, too. I really wanted to go eat there, but maybe some other time...
We stopped in Frankenstein on the way home, too. ...just so we could say we went there! AHHH! Frankenstein!
More to come...
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