Heidelberg - Germany Day 5

Today is day four in Germany and we started out in the bus driving over to Heidelberg, Germany. We had an excursion today which consisted of a boat ride down the Neckar Valley River to some castles. Once the boat reached the castles (which took forever and everything was looking the same so I got a little bored, also it was really early) we went on a bus ride to visit one of them, this castle was located in a tiny little medieval town that had an outer wall and an inner wall for protection.

This castle is not extravagant (at all) and it use to be bigger and nicer but the town people decided that the castle was of no use after the war and started using the bricks from the castle walls to build their own homes. There was a well in the castle and we got to visit an underground secret passage under the castle that lead to the bottom of the well.

After this fun adventure we went to Heidelberg again and headed to lunch. We found some delicious food and the waiters spoke english! But they kept calling us beautiful or beautiful flowers over and over, it started to get creepy after the third time. Then we took a bathroom break...

After lunch we met our hilarious guide for Heidelberg and the Heidelberg Castle. She wore a funny hat with a bird on it and she said hilarious things that only Mandi, the adults, and I laughed at. Once she was talking about the moat that the Prince built, it didn't hold water because the ground was sandstone! This moat became an area for animals like deer, so men would hand a cross bow to their wives and say, "Fetch us some dinner honey!", this was said in a husky man voice impression by our guide.

She also told us a story about a birthday present the Prince gave his wife for her 19th birthday. So the Prince had an arch made in one day for the Princess. She went to bed one day and the next day he took her on a walk through the gardens then ended the walk at this amazing arch! He said that there were hundreds of animals carved into the arch and for every animal she found she got a kiss. Then our guide told us that nine months later they had a baby. They ended up having 17 children during their 19 years together.

The Heidelberg Castle was amazing and we only saw one person let their dog pee in the middle of the walk way. :) After the dog incident we went down into the cellar where our guide told us about the huge barrels where the wine was held. In the olden days if you had a lot of land you had to pay by giving 10% of your wine to the government. This wine was stored in the cellar and there was a little man that tasted all the wine daily to see which one should be served to the King/Prince for lunch that day. These barrels were massive!!!! Mandi is the one standing in the middle at the top of the barrel.

Mandi dropped her ipod and shattered the screen...

After the cellar we went to this amazing area made for viewing Heidelberg and took some pictures.

Our guide told us a story about a man jumping from one of the windows because the Prince found him with the Princess. His foot print is imprinted on one of the stones below the windows and any man who can fit his foot in the imprint is a good lover...hahahahahaha!!!! I love our guide!

After this we walked down to the main city again...

Mandi did everything but smile in this picture, so I gave up and just took the picture and she ended up being extremely cute. CA CA RAWR! :)

Then we headed back to the hotel and said good bye to our bus driver Peter, who never got us in an accident and always said hello in a funny accent. Since we are headed to Paris tomorrow morning we won't be seeing him again. :(