Of course, there are 2 legs to our flight home, and Elisha wanted a Window seat, whilst I wanted an aisle seat. Luckily for us, for our first leg, I was able to book 2 seats on the plane that gave Elisha her window seat, and me the aisle seat and still be together.
Our second leg was a different story. The seats were set up with 3 seats on the side set of plane, so I had to look for the next best thing. There was no chance of getting 2 seats with one next to the window, they were just all booked up, but what did I find, was near the back of the plane, the seats go from 4 to 3 seats and the 3 seats were vacant. Assuming no-one would want the other seat I proceeded to book 2 seats of the 3 seat row.
With the seats checked, I headed back to the hotel.
We packed our bags for the last time, ensuring we got rid of all the plastic shopping bags that were no longer required (why we carried these bloody things about for so long, I'll never know), and headed down stairs.
Our favourite receptionist was once again on the desk, so we had a chat to her about what to do for the rest of the day (we were flying out in the evening) and she mentioned taking a look at Heidelberg Castle.
So, with all our belongings stored away in a cupboard at reception, we headed off the the Hauptbahnhof for our last day's travel in Germany.
The train system in Germany is fantastic. We found some seats with a table and sat ourselves down for the journey. The trip to Heidelberg was only 40 minutes on the train (although it was about €75 each) and was extremely comfortable. We passed through some gorgeous country side and saw a number of castles and manor houses along the way.
Got off at Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof and headed towards the tourist information to find out how to get to the castle - it is in fact very simple and one of the many buses we saw drives right passed the castle. So we caught the bus to the bottom of the Castle for a short walk up to the gates.
Now the castle is built on the top of a rather large hill in Heilelberg, so although the walk might have been short in relative terms compared to all the walking we have done in the past few weeks, it was extremely steep.
If you take a look at the photo above and take note of the handrail, you will see how the angle changes between the flat and the hill. Well, the path had to be at least 300 metres long, so by the time we got to the end of the path, we were beat.
Once inside though, all thoughts of tiredness were gone - the place was absolutely beautiful. For Elisha and I, this is exactly what we wanted to see - a castle originally built in the 13th century. Of course, being a medieval castle, and built on the top of a hill, the views were amazing.
We spent a couple of hours walking around ourselves, then found ourselves another guided tour. The tours are offered in a number of languages, including English and run for approximately 20 minutes. For only a few €uro, they are quite cheap too.
Our guide led us into a section of the castle only opened to those that take the tour and led us to a room with models of how the castle looked in the 16th century - with the beautiful gardens outside the moated area (this was a dry moat, not a water moat) - and showed us rooms that date back to the 17th century (not a lot remains of the old medieval castle buildings and those that do, are in ruins, as is the case with almost all other castles).
We found ourselves looking in on statues of old kings, and amazing furniture, along with a corridor with a frieze of many different coat of arms, still gloriously painted as they would have looked hundreds of years ago.
We were then taken onto the royal chapel. Being a chapel, and one used for the Royal family, it wasn't large, but it was beautiful. The altar was constructed using red and green marble with an exquisite painting above the altar.
Upon leaving the tour, we headed towards what has to be one of the most amazing spectacles I've ever seen. Inside the old kitchens, there is a wine barrel that is huge. Ok, huge doesn't quite describe this enough. It is the world's largest wine barrel, and when full, contains a total of 228,000 litres of wine.
We were told that the barrel had only ever been filled to capacity twice in its life-time, although it was not filled with the best wine. Wine was one of the methods the people used to pay their taxes and the levy from one person would be poured into the barrel with the wine from every other person that chose to pay their levy with wine, resulting in a mixture of all the different wines produced in the area. The wine was primarily used by the garrison of the castle, and would have also been watered down (no point having a garrison protecting the castle if they are all drunk).
Having digested all of the castle that Elisha and I could, and it being close to 16:30, we needed to head back to Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof to catch our train back to Frankfurt. Our problem was we didn't know how to get back.
We knew there was a bus that could take us back (one had brought us to the castle), but we had absolutely no idea as to where to catch it from. Since we had walked up the "small hill" into the castle, we wanted to see a different entrance on the way out, so we headed out of the castle down a large set of stairs in the hill towards, what we hoped to be the bus stop.
With me starting to stress a little, and our feet really hurting (6 weeks of constant walking had taken its toll), we managed to find a bus. Of course, this was not the same bus as we caught on the way up, but we had absolutely no idea as to which bus to take.
Realising (after about 10 minutes) that we were in fact on the wrong bus, we got off at a rather busy intersection in Heidelburg. We asked a number of people how to get the the Hauptbahnhof, and were advised to take the tram. With our tired and weary feet screaming to be given a bit of rest, we walked around to the tram stop to await our tram that would allow us to get home.
We waited for about 10 minutes at the tram stop until our tram rolled into the stop. Unfortunately, whilst the tram was sitting right in front of us, heading in the direction we wanted to go, it broke down. Of all the things that could have happened, the bloody thing broke and we now had no idea as to how we were going to catch our train.
With me stressing quite a bit (the last train we could catch left in about 30 minutes, so we didn't have a lot of time on our hands), and Elisha unable to walk (her feet had finally given up the game), we had no choice other than attempt to catch a taxi to the station.
Since we were in the middle of a large intersection and on the wrong side of a 3 lane road, we almost gave up. Although there are worse things than having to spend your life in Germany, we needed to catch our plane so we could see our little pussy cat (Streaker) again. Standing on the curb of the fast lane of the road, I hailed a taxi. Thankfully, he pulled over and picked us up, disregarding the many people stopping behind him and having to wait for two sore and weary tourists to get their hides into the taxi. To say the least, he saved the day, and took us directly to the station with only 10 minutes to spare before our train left without us.
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