Hello Heidelberg!

 Monday - March 21, 2022

It's my dad's 73rd birthday!  Yay dad!  We start our last morning in Mainz putting out suitcases outside our room for them to be picked up and loaded on the bus (we were so scared they would be stolen or forgotten we sat in the room with the door cracked open and didn't go down the breakfast until we saw them being taken away by hotel employees).  We then headed down to the dining room for breakfast.  We saw along the windows and had a great view of the Viking ship still tied up to the dock on the Rhine,  once again - cruise envy (sigh).

We hopped onto our bus and traveled to Heidelberg.  If there's one regret I have for this trip (other than - spoilers! - getting COVID at the end of the trip and getting pickpocketed), it's that we didn't take the funicular up to see the ruins of the palace - we opted to walk around instead.  The town is lovely, and we found all the awesome chocolates I wanted to get for my BFF's mom, chocolates for me, more snacks for us, and had some amazing gelato...but I do wish we had taken the funicular up.  I think at that moment we were a little castled out since we had driven/sailed by/visited a number of them in the last few days, but alas, regrets.  

Heidelberg is a university town, so that means a variety of cheap eats and lots of stores, which was awesome.  The skyline is dominated by the huge ruins of a palace built in 1214 - it was struck by lightning TWICE - and the second time, it caused a fire that destroyed the palace.  They never rebuilt it and that's what we see today.  Apparently there's a wine vat in there that's like, the size of a ship it's so gigantor.  A few people from our tour went and they showed me photos and I was impressed, even as someone who doesn't drink.  But it tells us they drank a WHOLE LOTTA wine back in ye olden days.

ye old towne square - otherwise known as Heidelberger Marktplatz

Church of the Holy Spirit in the Heidelberger Marktplatz

view along the Hauptstrasse in Heidelberg - the main street

the bridge gate to the old bridge - in one of the towers there are (or were) living quarters (I guess for the gatekeeper?) and in the other there are low-ceilinged rooms for detaining "suspicious persons"

the weird Bruckenaffe - this monkey holding up a bronze mirror.  There are bronze mice on the ground too.  There are legends or superstitions about good luck and fertility and other random stuff.

early in the day the castle is backlit, so we had a hard time getting photos of it.  We opted to come back later in the day to capture photos of the castle from the bridge.

but we could get photos of the other side of the bridge!  This is the Neckar River 

We start wandering the Hauptstrasse and see a Starbucks - look at these adorable mugs!  I don't really collect them, but it was so cute that I ended up coming back and grabbing one - and an ornament mug too.

After wandering for an hour, buying chocolates and snacks in the grocery store, and finding a dm so my mom could buy German nail clippers (she bought some our last trip and has raved about them being the best nail clippers ever) my mom wanted to sit down and have lunch.  There was an Asian-ish restaurant next to the dm, but she specifically wanted soup.  So I Googled restaurants with soup and found Franz Soupmarine.  It had really good reviews and it was pretty close to where we were. 

We walked over, and it wasn't until we arrived that we (I) realized that this was a vegan soup restaurant.  Um...no meat?  Cheese?  Cream?  How do you have soup without these?  Wut.

My mom said she didn't care that it was vegan, she just wanted to sit down and have soup - so I braved the German vegan restaurant and haltingly asked what soups they had since I couldn't read the chalkboard menu.  The lady working the register was super nice - there were 6 soups to choose from, and I randomly picked 3.  They came in some BIG bowls!  And I didn't get the large size!  It was cheap, it was hot, and it wasn't bad for vegan soup.  I ended up with a blended broccoli soup and my mom actually loved her vegetable stew.  It came with a basket of bread and ended up being a super cheap and filling lunch.  

Yes, it was my dad's birthday and my mom made him have vegan soup for lunch.  My poor dad.

Feeling super self righteous about the small amount of money spent and the fact that I ingested a bowl of soup that had no cheese, cream, butter or meat in it - I saw a gelato store and bee-lined for it ordering 2 scoops before my parents knew where I was going 😂.  I find it's not a real European vacation until one has some gelato.  Even if one is bundled up in a sweater.  

my mama got the mango, her favorite flavor.  My dad doesn't like super cold foods, so he just took photos of us pigging out instead.

pistachio and hazelnut, thank you very much.

After gelato we moseyed our way back towards the old bridge - past the bridge is our meeting place with the group.

the old bridge isn't that old - not really.  It was built in the 18th century - but it's the 9th bridge to stand here since the 13th century.  This is built upon the foundation of the old bridges constructed with sandstone from the Neckar.  It's a pedestrian only bridge, so it's a lovely place to admire the city and the hills, the castle and the river from,

you can see the castle now!

and of course I need a duplicate photo too

aren't these adorable? 😍

We all gather back onto the bus and continue our drive to Strasbourg - the only night we spend in France.  I knew nothing about Strasbourg before we went, knew nothing about it when we entered - but it ended up being one of my favorite locations on this trip!  We stayed at the Hilton Strasbourg.  The hotel was nice - I liked the layout of the one in Mainz more, but it was a perfectly fine and functional modern Hilton.  It was a little far from the old town and sights of Strasbourg, and we were already tired from our hours of walking around Heidelberg.  So once we got to our rooms and our luggage arrived - we unpacked just enough for one night since we were headed to Lucerne the next day and relaxed until we met for dinner downstairs.

We thought having dinner included was a perk of the tour, because then we wouldn't have to think about what and where to eat.  Honestly though, at the end of the day - after hours touring and walking and riding on the bus whilst getting up early to pack our luggage for pick up and to grab breakfast...we were tired as hell by 5pm.  The last thing I wanted to do was to put my outside pants back on and fix my makeup and hair and go downstairs to a restaurant for a group dinner.  We were able to sit together at almost every meal just because we tried to get there early (with the exception of one) - but we often sat at a table with others or someone had to sit with us because they got there too late to sit with their group.  It wasn't bad, and the food was pretty good overall - but when you're tired, you don't want to make conversation.   I just wanted to grab something fast and easy, sit in my room with sweatpants on and eat on the couch or bed and watch funny YouTube videos and just relax and decompress from the day.  For a 7 night tour, we had 4 dinners included...I really looked forward to the nights where we could grab our own food and just chill in the room.  While walking to our rooms one night, one of the ladies in our group asked what time we were meeting for dinner.  When I told her it was free time that night Eva's face lit up and she exclaimed, "Oh thank God!  I just want to grab a sandwich and watch TV in bed!"  I knew just how she felt.  Granted, she was in her 70's, but I felt like she was my spirit animal when she said that.  

I didn't take any photos that night because I was tired.  Also, the food was just meh.  While we waited outside the hotel restaurant there was a large business crowd milling around the bar - I think there was a conference at the hotel.  The dinner was fine - I remember it being chicken and it was...fine.  The service was not great since it was France and we had nice and chatty tablemates that night - Norm and Judy from Florida.  They're also obsessed with cruising and as they're retired, they can jump on last minute deals for less than the cost of a week of groceries.  I'm so jealous!  Except...Florida.  They don't like Florida either, but their kids and grandkids are there, so they can't leave.  But I am super jealous of their proximity to cheap and easy cruises and Disney World.  But I still don't want to live in Florida.  The weather.  The alligators.  The swamps.  The humidity.  The people 😑.  Okay, not all the people - but some of them...the thigh tattoos, the boobages, the body hair...

Anyhoo, we finished dinner and headed upstairs where we could shower and finally lay down.  My parents watched youtube on the roku we plugged into the TV and I read my kindle and fell asleep.  Tomorrow we explore the old town of Strasbourg (it was so much more awesome than I thought it would be!) and we head towards Switzerland, a bucket list location for my mama!