Heidelberg, Not to be Confused with Hindenburg...

Yesterday, Brian and I headed to Heidelberg, Germany - a great walled city situated right along the River Neckar about an hour and fifteen minutes away from Stuttgart.  We hopped in my Dad's car, set the Garmin to Heidelberg Castle and started on our way!  Surprisingly, the Garmin lead us right up to zee cahstle.  (Yes, I purposely said 'zee cahstle' expecting it to be read exactly as it sounds because that is how I was talking the entire trip!)  And, not surprisingly, we couldn't park in front of zee cahstle, so we headed down to the market place in the old center area and got a public parking spot.

We could not have planned our parking better.  We were smack dab in the middle of the market place and were certainly impressed with our chance parking!  We were able to walk around town, grab a quick lunch at a Lebanese restaurant called 'Sahara', take a funicular back up to zee cahstle, grab some amazing views from said cahstle, and head back down to the Old Bridge where we were able to grab some more amazing views!

It was cloudy and slightly chilly but not cold enough to prevent us from being touristy!

That night, we when returned back to my Dad's house, we headed to Funzel in Sindelfingen and had some authentic German roast beef, spatzel, sauerkraut, and beer!  It was probably the best meal we have had so far!  But, we decided that the next time that we eat at Funzel we will probably split one dish!  The portions were humongous!

Today, we headed to the Koenigstrasse, the downtown area of Stuttgart.  We went to the Schlossplatz, the largest square in the center of the city, and home of the Neues Schloss (New Cahstle).  It was very chilly today, and we were happy with the decision to scratch our original plans of heading into Strasbourg, France, with a relaxing day in Stuttgart.  We'll have to save Strasbourg for our next visit!

Tonight, we went to Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampires), a musical at the Palladium Theater, where I, once again, got in trouble for taking a picture before the show had even started.  I'm beginning to notice that cameras are not allowed in more places than I have originally recalled!  The musical was entirely in German, but it was fantastic and highly entertaining!  We may have missed the funny one liners, as was evident when the audience broke out into laughter and the three of us just sat there in silence with our eyes transfixed on the scene, but we got the jist of the story, and it was a great performance!  What made it even better was the song that we instantly recognized from the play!  We heard the German remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", and it was definitely entertaining knowing the lyrics but hearing them in German!

We've just been having so much fun on vacation!