Easter Weekend: Heidelberg Part I

We headed to Heidelberg this past weekend to take advantage of Patrick's days off. Along the way we stopped at Burg Eltz for a quick tour and the best potato salad I had all weekend (I sampled three.) Here we are on the hike down and back. We thought Brennan would be pooped from all the trekking and food, but he managed to skip his nap and the next 2 hours in the car to Heidelberg were not pleasant.





Fortunately, the base where we were staying had an awesome playground for him to run around in and burn off the rest of his energy. I found it's placement, directly under the power lines, to be a bit odd though.



On Saturday morning we met our friends, the McLallens, at Heidelberg castle. The morning was a little hectic because each family had trouble finding it and/or parking, and the ticket combinations were a little bit confusing. It turned out that we had purchased tickets for entrance to the castle grounds, but not the tour, and in order to get INTO the castle one has to pay extra to take the tour. That didn't seem like a good idea with the kids, so we settled for running around the courtyard, perusing the Apothecary Museum and visiting the largest wine barrel in the world. We then tried to take the cable car to the top of the berg (included in our combination ticket) but we had purchased tickets for the lower half of the ride and the McLallens for the entire thing. So, we parted ways before lunch, but it was nice to see them while it lasted!





The largest wine barrel in the world is slightly larger than this one, but not as photogenic.



We headed down to the Altstadt to eat on the go, and took Brennan to the Neckar river where we had promised him he would see some boats. There weren't too many out, but our sighting of a man in a canoe made his day.



While we were walking the city, a miracle occurred on Hauptstrasse and Brennan actually napped in his stroller!! This allowed us to see much more of the city than we otherwise would have and we did a ton of walking. We stopped for tea in a small Indian restaurant/convenience store and Brennan woke up in time to watch Indian music videos. Then we headed back to the river with the intention of taking a short river cruise. We were told that the boat would only leave if there were at least 10 people going, and this didn't look promising in the cold, rainy weather. The company let us hang out on the boat since it was raining and we ordered food and drink, thinking at the very least we could snack in a floating cafe. We were on tenterhooks for awhile, but we did end up with enough passengers, whew! Boat tours are a very civilized way to sight see: you are warm and dry, sipping hot chocolate as the scenery passes by and listening to informative narration in three languages while your toddler is (fairly) quiet and entertained.