On To Heidelburg

After our serenade, we set off for Heidelburg and its famous castle. We found an underground parking garage and easily found a space. Damion and Crystal were not far behind us. Exiting the parking garage onto a beautiful town square with a central fountain, we made our way to a souvenir shop and bought a few things before beginning our ascent to the castle. Yes, this was indeed a famous castle as evidenced by the hordes of people paying 3 Euro each to enter! Ah, it was excruciatingly beautiful! The history of this castle and maintenance of it make it unique. We visited the old Apothecary and the huge wine cellar where Crystal and Wayne tasted wines (and bought glasses).

The climb UP to the castle was very hard and steep. I wasn't even sure I could do it. But going down was much easier. Crystal helped by reminding me to lean BACK when I walked to slow down my descent.

We got to the bottom to find a stage had been set up in the town square along with food and drink tents and MANY people there to enjoy the entertainment. We had a light lunch there and then BACK to the car and on our way to yet another historic place in Germany.
We headed toward a couple of places Wayne had researched and was very anxious to get to, but almost before we knew it, it started to get late and we had not secured lodging for the night. We started stopping at various inns and guest haus along the way but had trouble finding a vacancy anywhere! We finally ended up in an old hotel that looked as if it had been a very elegant place at some point in time, but no more.
My single room was down a very dark hallway and was the only room occupied in that whole hallway for the night. I had a brief thought of Jack Nicholson running down it with an axe! It was situated very strangely but opened up to a patio I somehow shared with the rest of my party. The view from that balcony was of a castle high upon a mountain above us. This hotel was actually in Hohenzollem, according to my receipt.
After getting our bags up and semi-settled, off we went in search of dinner. There was a restaurant in the hotel but since no one else was eating there, we took that as a cue and decided to strike out for something better. As much trouble as we had finding a place to sleep, we had MORE trouble finding a place to eat.

We finally settled on an almost-deserted place that was still serving dinner so we took it. It smelled pretty bad inside so we decided to eat on the patio even if it was already dusk.
The food was reasonably priced and tasted great, well, until I found a hair in my plate. Thankfully, I was full enough to stop eating since I was thoroughly nauseated after that!
Back to our hotel rooms where we all gathered in Damion and Crystal's "suite" for a game of Scrabble and a glass of wine. I'm not a very good Scrabble player so I opted out to download some pictures to my computer but stayed and enjoyed the company for awhile.
Damion found a BUNCH of ants and a spider in his room, so of course he called to complain. It was really very funny. We got the little guy back up to the room and he ended up comping them a bottle of champagne.
I certainly checked my bed and room before I laid down to be sure of no bugs! All was well and I slept fitfully again, just a strange place, I guess.
Next post will be our night in Nesselwang near the Austrian border with a grand view of the Alps!