Wurzburg & Heidelburg, Germany

Well, my time on the Romantic Road ended by staying in the town of Wurzburg. I did not get to see quite as much of the town as I had hoped to due to the weather. Now, here is a little pop quiz for everyone. What is worse than cold weather?...Snow. What is worse than snow?...Rain. Why is rain worse you might ask, because snow you can just brush off while rain drencheds you. And what is worse than rain?...Rain with wind because it comes at you from all angles and there is nothing you can do to keep dry. And that is exactly what I got. Of course, it probably did not help that I have managed to lose 2 brand spanking new umbrellas over here (don't ask me how cause I still have not quit figured that one out yet) and I refuse to by another! So I headed out in the rain on my one day there to explore a bit. The one place that I really wanted to see there was the Residenz and luckily this as all indoors. The Reidenz is another Unesco World Heritage site with the biggest ceiling fresco in the world. You are greeted upon walking through the door of the massive palace first by this huge staircase and on the other side of it is a huge ballroom of sorts. The ballroom has a beautiful ceiling fresco of angels covering the whole thing. YOu kinda feel as though you are in heaven because it is very ornate with all of the gold decorations as well. Then you walk up the stiarcare and the entire thing has this huge fresco above it that is just massive. I stood there staring at it for a good 15 minutes before finally moving on to see the rest. The palace was impressive, but the ceiling frescos were by far the highlight.

After that, I decided that I has had enough of the wind and rain, so I grabbed a train to my next stop, Heidelberg. This little town is not very big but it is so cute. There is one main street running down the sent of it and it seems as though the rest of the town is built around that. The main street is a pedestrian street lined with tons of shops and such. There were also a buch of Christmas markets going on there and that was tons of fun to look at too. The highlight of this town is this old Renaissance Castle perched up on a hill overlooking the town. It is really romantic looking because it is partially destroyed and in ruins yet other parts are still standing quite well. It is made of this dark red colored brick and so that helps to make it look very unique. I hiked up there and poked around for a while before going into the Pharmacy Museum located in the castle. This was quite fascinating to see how the current practice of pharmacy as we know it came into existance. I really enjoyed it!

I was only supposed to be here for one night but I ended up staying for 2 because I was so tired from moving so much and I liked it, so I figured that I would enjoy one more day. I spent my second day there jsut walking around and taking in the shops, sights, and sounds of the Christmas markets. They really are not something done for tourists, but instead for the residents. It is one of those traditions that all families go every year and just enjoy them because that is what you do at Christmas time over here. You go, often at night with the whole family, grab some great food that is really not good for you, and drink you hot wine while mingling with fellow friends you run into there and taking in the shopping booths or kids enjoy the few rides there are. It is nice to see because you don't very often see family stuff so much like this in the States. Instead it is parents frantically running around trying to do all the shopping instead of spending the time with their families. I thoroughly enjoyed them all!