Heidelberg and Heidelberg Castle

Yesterday we went to downtown Heidelberg and to Heidelberg Castle! It was absolutely freezing cold, but it was a ton of fun and so pretty! The main street of downtown Heidelberg is a narrow strip of cobblestone street that's lined with shops and restaurants. It's about 2 miles long and ends by a gorgeous gigantic church! Looking up the hill from the end of the street you can see Heidelberg Castle looking down over the town. The castle is amazingly gorgeous, and the town is so cute. It's all red-roofed buildings packed closely together with narrow windy streets, just like any good old European downtown.

Our day started with a trek to the bus stop, and when we got there we discovered that we had missed the last bus for the next hour, so we waited in the freezing cold trying to stay warm until the bus got there. We ended up calling a cab, though, because it was so cold. The cab took us downtown, and our first stop was a little cafe to get some coffee and pastry so we could warm up. I got a latte macchiato (or something like that), and chocolate filled croissant! It was delicious. We then walked around downtown, went into a few shops (where I painted each of my nails a different color at H&M), and made our way up to the castle! The castle is just gorgeous, and the view of the town from the balcony is absolutely breathtaking! We didn't see all there was to see with the castle, but we just figured we could come back a different day. After the castle we tried to find a candy shop, but it was closed so we just went to dinner. We went to a little brew house by the old bridge and got bratwurst and schnitzel and beer. My beer was mixed with sparkling strawberry wine and strawberries. The Germans really seem to like mixing things with their beer! But it was pretty good! After dinner we went back to the apartment and did a beer tasting. We had grapefruit beer, cactus fruit beer, pear and ginger beer, the bottled version of beer and sprite, and green lemon beer. They were all low alcohol content and pretty sweet so I liked it much better than regular beer. It seems really strange to me to mix all of that kind of stuff with beer, but to each his own I suppose! Here are some pictures!