Day 17: Fun with Becky in Heidelberg

So, the weather turned out to be lovely, not too hot, a bit cloudy and a bit sunny, and no real rain and the humidity wasn't awful. How awesome is that?

We were out and about 13 hours or so with Becky after we had breakfast at the hotel.  We took a long walk and saw the river and the old bridge and interesting buildings and scenery along the river.

We saw the castle and went to the top of the mountain via the old style funicular (40% grade!). The view up there is fantastic. People who just go to the castle are really missing out.

We then walked all over the castle grounds, looked at the giant wine barrels, took photos of lots of funny statues and carving and what not, and ate a nice leisurely lunch.

We went back down the mountain via the e-funicular, and walked around Heidelberg some more.

We found the old student prison (lots of scary stairs) which was really über cool.

We went to the church again to buy tickets to the concert (sold half an hour before the concert begins), and that provided the opportunity to look around the church with very few other people inside. 

We discovered the interesting stained glass windows. On the right side, almost all are quite old fashioned and lovely. However, one, the most rearward, is a modern interpretation of a memorial for Hiroshima. It is mostly red and has the date of the bombing, the equation of mass energy equivalence (e = mc^2), and a symbol of the bomb being dropped, and the world exploding. It is both beautiful and terrible.

The left side of the church has all very modern themed and sort of abstract stained glass windows. We hope we can find something explaining or interpreting them.

Then, we attended a violin, piano/organ concert at the Holy Spirit Church. The pair of fantastic musicians played four works (Bach, Brahms, Schubert,, & encore Bach). The female violinist was beautiful to hear and interesting to watch. The male organist/pianist rotated between the two. They made such beautiful music.

Then, we had a nice German dinner with desert, and a leisurely walk home. 

We are all tired but it was a good day.