Day 5 - Exploring Heidelberg

Monday, July 7th 2014  -  Day 5

A day exploring Heidelberg

We didn't cycle on this day so there were no GPS stats for the day

It was a pleasant day, mostly cloudy. 

Our room, 2 floors up from the Glauer's flat.  On the second night, we stayed in their living room on their roll out bed because the upstairs bathroom was finally getting the rebuild they had been asking for for ages.

We bought a pass for the day and hopped on a tram to take us to the old city

We decided to take the funicular tram up the mountain to get to the schloss (castle) and whatever was beyond.  This turned out to be a great choice and took up pretty much the whole day.  We bought tickets that included return fare on the tram plus entrance to the schloss.

We settle into one of the cars on the "funicular" tram.  This means it is a tram that goes up a steep track but the tram is built with each car staying level in spite of the steepness of the track.  You go up and down stairs to get in and out of it.

Looking down on the car below us after the tram emerged from the tunnel on its way up

It turned out there were 2 trams and the first went in two stages:  First to the level of the schloss, and then up to another level on the mountain where there were some good views of the city and a restaurant.  We decided to stay on the tram and go to the top first and then we could get off at the schloss on the way down.  When we got to the 2nd stage up the mountain, we then discovered that there was another tram, much older, a little steeper and it went as much higher in its single stage as both stages of the first one.  We also discovered that we needed to buy tickets for this tram separate from our tickets already purchased, but we were quite willing to do so and it turned out to be certainly worth it.

Some views from the top of the first tram

Up the stairs into the building that houses the lower end of the upper tram

Here comes the upper tram down to pick us up

You can see in these pictures how passengers get on and off at different levels and walk down or up the stairs to or from the exit

Waiting for the conductor to open the gate and let us on.  I look like an excited kid.  Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered ...

We chose to get on the bottom car so as to have the best view of the valley while going up the mountain.  A couple of pictures here are to give you an idea of the antique-ness of the tram

At first, the curve of the track and the trees obscure the grand view 

But that gradually changes

Climbing up the stairs when we reach the top

Having reached the top, the views of Heidelberg and beyond are to die for.

Even better views were available when I climbed a little higher up to the road at the top of the mountain.  Also at the top of the mountain were a couple of radio towers and a park for children to learn about nature.

I played around with the zoom on our camera to get different views of the river valley and countryside beyond.  Compare this picture (above) with the 3 below   They were all taken from the same spot.

This shot illustrates what a terrific camera we have.  I have shaky hands, but even at 20x zoom, the stabilizer does a pretty good job.

We have a Canon Power Shot SX240 HS with 20X optical zoom, full HD (12.1 mega pixels) and image stabilizer.  I carry it in my shirt pocket while riding and can take it out, turn it on and shoot with one hand while trying to keep up to Erika.  A lot of the pictures that you are seeing in this blog while we were riding were shot this way.  I just point in the general direction and shoot.  Sometimes I will even zoom in a bit while on the fly, but if I want to make sure it is a good shot for zoom and direction, I will stop. But movement is never a problem as far as focus and light go.  The auto settings and stabilizer have really impressed me. 

While at the top, this graphic of the funicular railway showed up.  If you click on it, it will open up in a larger version and you can see the grade percentages.  

If you want to zoom any picture even bigger, right click on it and "save image as..."  Then you can open it up using Windows Photo Gallery or whatever software you use to look at .jpg 's

Waiting for the tram to come back up to take us down.

A bike path halfway up the mountain that goes under the tramway

As we come down the mountain, we are about to pass the counterbalancing other tram going up the mountain.  The two trams are connected by a single cable that you can see on the track in front of us.  The cable is attached to the tram coming toward us, goes under our tram, up the mountain to the top, then comes back down and attaches to our tram.

The halfway house between trams

The zoomed view from half way down the mountain

Halfway down the lower half of the mountain, we are now going to get off the lower tram to see the schloss

Not part of the schloss, obviously, but still picturesque

The schloss was really extensive and it was already too late in the day to catch the last of the english tours, but we spent a lot of time exploring and pretty well all the signs were in english as well as french and german.  

This area was set up for staged productions and they were just taking down some scenery boards that looked like the last play had been a Romeo and Juliet set in war time Europe

You can see the barbed wire on the facade

Erika was fascinated by this tree.  The flowers were kind of delicate prickly balls.  Don't know what it was.

A large section of the castle was a museum of the history of medicine and apothecary.  

From Austria, 300 years ago, this picture depicts Christ as a pharmacist

Bench of the day?

Some of the old castle passageways are pretty cool

Once back outside, we did a lot of exploring of the castle itself and the view of the city from the castle

We took a picture of a family that was travelling together with their son who had just finished his mission and they returned the favor by taking a picture of the two of us

When it rains, the water pours out of these dragon mouths

These are pretty large barrels, but the biggest is yet to come

Now this is a BIG barrel

Again, we traded picture taking favors, this time with a mother and daughter on vacation together.

We descend into the tunnel to go back to city level

The day ended with pizza making with the little boys.  One of the ingredients that worked really well was tuna.

Staying with the Glauers was definitely one of the highlights of the vacation for us.  The little boys treated us like we were really another set of grandparents to them.  Julie and Martin were fabulous energetic, thoughtful, interesting, generous and all round wonderful people who were just an absolute delight to visit with.  The exact same can be said of the Wildermuths who we stayed with 3 days earlier.  Erika has documented our stays with them in the earlier blog "Showering with Friends".  But I just have to underline that and say that we couldn't possibly have been luckier than we were to have had these two families introduce us to the opportunities that come by way of https://www.warmshowers.org/

I have to share one final sweet thing:  On the first day with the Glauer family as we were trying to learn the names and get them all straight, Moses, on his own initiative, brought this to us:

This is a treasured memento of our adventure.  Moses, Caspar, Turis and Herbie, I hope we get to see you again before you grow up too much and forget who we are.