Heidelberg

What a lovely city. This was the last one we visited before heading back to Frankurt am Main to drop Ray's parents off for their flight on New Year's day. That means we spent New Year's Eve here!

The town in located on the Neckar River (a small river that feeds into the Rhine) and is red. What I mean is that brick just covers the city. It's absolutely gorgeous and the houses are stunning. Here are some photos of the scenery:

Another gorgeous feature is the castle. It's actually a palace, but since it looks like a castle, it's called one. The castle was first built in the 1200's and is a ruin. It was struck by lightning a few times, endured a fire... etc. I love ruins. There's something so rustic and a little dangerous about them. We took a lot of photos...

For any of you literature geeks out there, this may be of interest to you...

The photos here (below) are of the castle's powder turret. Here's some information I found from Wikipedia about it: "The Heidelberg Castle Powder Turret, split by an explosion, was described by Mark Twain in his 1880 book A Tramp Abroad."

Here's Ray & Kay...

...and recreating the same photo we took at Niagara Falls... (note the classy Fanta in Ray's hand, haha!)

The castle before the destruction

...another few pieces of random trivia... there are about 100 weddings/year at the castle & the majority of tourists come from Japan & America

Since this is supposed to be one of the most romantic cities in Germany, we took some love photos...

Next stop, Versailles!