Day 7: "The World's Second Largest Wine Barrel"

After a good night in Heidelberg, we awoke and enjoyed a hotel breakfast of what seems to be typical in Germany- bread, meat, cheese, and cereal. Today was our day to visit the Heidelberg Castle, which sits upon a hill overlooking the city. There was only one way to get up to the castle, though: Funicular.
I, for one, had no idea what a Funicular was, so I was surprised to find that it was sort of like a multi-level bus. Because the hill had such a steep incline, the bus was built like stair-steps and only went diagonally instead of on flat land. Here's a picture I found online-

The doors are on different levels, as you can see, and two funiculars run up and down simultaneously, then switch directions. We had to get on a different funicular track at the halfway point that was a little older than the other ones, and much, much slower.
We made it up to the castle and found that it was built in the 1500s. There was a large courtyard in the center surrounded by the building, and a lovely garden a little further away. We didn't have an audio tour so I can't tell you as much as I'd like to, but a lot of the castle was either destroyed or under construction. We weren't allowed to go inside most of the castle, probably because the 500 year old brick was getting a little shaky. We were, however, allowed to see the world's second largest and largest wine barrels.
Abby took some awesome pictures of the castle- sorry for the sideways-ness.

A lot of those were taken from outside the castle, either on the way to the garden or in the garden. The last picture is of some cows/oxen/bulls/yaks that we saw as we were walking.
After we finished at the castle, we got back on the funicular and made the transfer to the older one so we could go to the top of the hill. The view was amazing, but it was very, very cold! Dad had a beer, and the rest of us split a hot chocolate and a pretzel.

We rode back down to the ground and walked over to our hotel. Next on the agenda was getting our laundry done at the laundromat. We had to take a bus there, but the buses ran every half hour so it was no trouble. While the clothes were drying, we headed over to a mall food court and had some pizza. It was pretty good, and the people-watching in the mall was enjoyable. We collected our laundry and returned to the hotel, before heading out for the afternoon.
Our afternoon was spent shopping down the world's longest pedestrian-only zone. We were searching specifically for a jersey for Abby (see yesterday's post) but unfortunately couldn't find anything. I, however, got a pretty pair of earrings from a department store. We then decided to stop for a break at Pier 4, a bar/restaurant on the water. We had some drinks and watched the water, before heading up to the bridge.
The bridge across the Neckar was about 400 meters long and filled with people. It was also a pedestrian-only zone, which I find to be wonderful. We could see the boats passing beneath us and the mountains on either side of the river.
Once we got across the bridge, we decided to have a walk up the Philosopher's Way, where scholars at the local university would walk to talk about grand ideas. We found, however, that it was difficult to think about moral questions while hiking up the steep slope. We were not disappointed, however, when we saw the awesome view from the top. We shared some gummies and relaxed a while, before heading down to find somewhere for dinner.
After walking around the streets for a while and heading through the big church, we stopped at a fancy organic hamburger place. It was fantastic- the burgers were big and they were delicious. The only off thing about it was the fact that their ketchup tasted like marinara sauce.
We were sleepy after dinner and we had to wake up early the next morning, so we headed to bed at our hotel- only after watching a dramatic episode of the wall in German. We couldn't understand much of what was going on but it looked like they were doing pretty well. I'll update you on our adventures in Fussen tomorrow!
Sarah Jackson