Our first weekend in Germany we decided to stay local and explore the areas around where we will be living so at the suggestion of a friend, we decided to drive a little over an hour to spend some time in Heidelberg and walk around the town and their castle. What I love about Germany is that every town has incredible history within it. The stores and houses are built around these aging architectures as if they are part of the nature and landscape themselves, getting as close as they can yet still leaving room for them too be preserved.
What I have also learned in this first week is that Germany is typically overcast and apparently rains a lot in the summer. We bought an umbrella (ours are being shipped…oops) in order to keep somewhat dry and grabbed a spot at a cafe inside the castle to let the worst of the weather pass before continuing on our adventures.
The earliest part of Schloss Heidelberg was built in 1214 and continued to expand through the 1700s.The castle ruins are among the most important Renaissance structures north of the Alps.
My favorite part of the palace was of course, the barrel room…aka for the wine! There are several large barrels down there and a giant barrel was built into the building’s cellar in 1591. It held 130,000 litres (about 34,342 gallons) of wine collected from the Palatinate in payment of taxes. They had several different wine tastings so we decided to try one out and went for the Riesling tasting – all of them were incredibly different and all delicious – I had never tried Rieslings against each other!
Afterwards, since the sun was still on our side, we walked around and checked out the local shops and cafes. There is certainly a lot more to see and do in the area and I am sure we will be back!
Can’t wait to share all of our new explorations with you!
Xx
Kali