For some reason Heidelberg was on my radar quite early. I think I'd read something about it, or someone had told me to go there. However for the most part I couldn't remember why, just that I had to go there. Turns out it's mostly famous for a redstone castle, nice old town and old bridge. Thinking that I'm starting to run into time constraints if I want to get to scandinavia and perhaps do the Topdeck tour I decided I needed to start getting a bit of a move on, so I only booked 2 nights, which basically gave me one evening and one full day to explore.

That pretty much is all I really needed. I spent a couple of hours exploring the old town and checking out the bridge and then went to the castle. I did a guided tour there to learn about it. Unfortunately as is the case with many castles these days, this one was mostly a ruin after having burned down from a lightning strike to one of the tower a couple of hundred years ago. Some of it since then had been rebuilt, but mostly not. It did give a great view of the town from up there though.

That night I went to a restaurant and had a huge pork knuckle for dinner and a nice German beer. I had missed this kinda cuisine. It might not be anything particularly fancy, but it is what I enjoy. Lots of sausages, beer, pretzels and that kinda thing.

I think this one's going to be a pretty short entry, because honestly that was about it. It was a short and sweet visit. The second night I was there I started seeing lots of people with some facepaint and other German coloured stuff on, and the stores were all completely packed with people buying beer. I was trying to figure out if there was some kind of holiday or event on or something. I soon discovered after walking past a cafe that it was the German match in which they beat Portugal 4 zip. It was basically non-stop horn honking all through town after that.

I was going to Stuttgart after this really for the sole purpose of visiting Hohenzollern castle which I had discovered somewhere a few months earlier. I decided to use BlaBlaCar to get there, something I always mean to do more of. Turns out the guy I contacted was even driving, but taking the train with a ticket which is 20euro for one person but then only 4euro for each additional person. So through BlaBlaCar we ended up splitting the cost 3 ways which worked out quite cheap.