Heidelberg

Wednesday, I had to go to Heidelberg to a doctor's appointment. The clinic here didn't have the right kind of doctor so they sent me up to Heidelberg. It's about 1-1/2 to 2 hours drive away so Brad went with me and I took the day off. After my appointment we went walking around Heidelberg. It's a college town, plus they have an old castle above the city. This picture, which I got off the web, shows the city. It's one of the more famous sites in Germany. When we got up to the castle and went to take pictures, we discovered that - though we had brought the camera - we had forgotten the memory card at home and couldn't take any pictures! We'll have to go back :-)

After we walked around the castle, we drove down to the area near the river that has all the shops and restaurants. Here you could really see how much of a tourist town this place was because they had Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, Baskin Robbins, etc. and everywhere we went the shopkeepers spoke English. Finding parking was quite an adventure though, we were driving along a side street when it kicked us out on the main pedestrian thoroughfare. We were driving in the middle of the walkway - no other cars around - no way to turn around - driving real slow so people could get out of our way - when Brad saw a bus off to the side and zipped over there thinking - salvation! We had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere :-) After we got past the people we found a place to park and went and ate lunch and people watched.

The one shop there that we thought was really neat was a Christmas store. The intricate woodwork in the German Christmas decorations is simply amazing. Brad and I are going to have to leave Germany with a whole new set of Christmas decor!