It was nice to visit somewhere completely new for the both of us and once we had unpacked it was time to explore Heidelberg, or base for four nights.

The railway station is quite a walk from the start of the old town area of Heidelberg, although there is a tram from the station to Bismarkplatz if you wish to save your legs. The main street in Heidelberg is a long drawn out affair and must be well over a mile in length, but the there are plenty of nice old buildings to admire on this busy shopping street which is also mostly pedestrianised.

Being Germany and December there was of course a Christmas Market in town and this started at Bismarkplatz and also occupied parts of the main street as well as the squares off of it. The initial feel about Heidelberg was really nice and we were looking forward to visiting the castle, maybe a brew pub as well as having a walk on the Philosophers Way that would, weather dependent, provide excellent views across the river, the city and the castle.

We actually only had one full day in Heidelberg, but had each evening in the city after a few days out.

To reach the castle you can walk up the hill and pay €7.00 to enter the castle or you can pay your €7.00 and catch the funicular railway and also enter the castle. Walking seemed a bit of a daft idea. The castle itself is partly ruined and this is, in some ways, quite interesting to see. The castle houses a pharmacy museum as well as the largest wine barel in the world capable of holding over 52,000 gallons - which would me going for a few years for sure.

Between our castle visit and lunch the heavens opened, although with snow and the central area was soon blanketed in white. Sadly this turned to rain, but it did give us the chance to grab some food and take on some fluids before being able to tackle the Philosphers Way walk as the sun came out and made for ideal walking conditions.

The walk up to the Philosophers Way was fairly steep and no wonder people came here to ponder and think. You certainly would be thinking why there was not a funicular railway on this side of the river . . . . . The views across the river, the city and castle were very good and worth the steep climb.

Before dinner there was an opportunity sample a local Brauhaus before heading off to BAY-JOK, a Thai restarant, that we subsequently found out was #1 on TripAdvisor for places to eat in Heidelberg. The restaurant was OK, but didn't have much of a Thai atmosphere about it and seating was a little too cramped for our liking - probably not #1 in our view. Given we had each evening in Heidelberg we also visited Löwenbrau (a traditional German pub/restaurant) on our first evening and La Vitte, a busy Italian restaurant, on our final evening to round off our trip.

As already mentioned we were in Heidelberg and used the historic city as a base for visiting some other places in the area. We had some spare free rail passes to use on Deutsche Bahn so it would be rude not to use them! We visited Bad Herrenhalb and Karlsruhe on one day and Würzburg on another spare day - and individual entries will be added to this blog for these day trips.

Overall we very much enjoyed Heidelberg and after our tasty Italian meal on the final evening it was time to start the trip home - by train of course - travelling via Frankfurt, Brussels and London.