Day 291: Bergpark Wilhelmshohe

Time to go and visit the World Heritage site here, the only reason we actually came to town! It's a huge park area on the edge of town, known as Bergpark Wilhelmshohe, or literally "Mountain Park". It's a moderate-sized English garden park on the side of a mountain, decorated with some interesting follies to see.

Headed out and grabbed some supermarket croissants for breakfast, then walked the 20 minutes over to the park entrance. Very cold, hovering around zero, but thankfully it at least wasn't snowing - though there was plenty piled around on the ground.

The one problem with a mountain-side park is that it tends to require a lot of hill climbing. A lot, as it turned out. We wandered around for a while looking at the various objects, including a fake ruined castle, a fake ruined aqueduct, several ponds and waterfalls, a replica bridge of somewhere in Switzerland, and on top of everything at the peak of the park - a 5 metre statue of Hercules. Standing on a 30 metre pyramid, atop a 40 metre octagonal building. Very strange, but very impressive.

This whole area has huge water features as it runs downhill (reckoned to be among the most impressive in Europe), but sadly they only run twice a week and only during the summer. So we definitely weren't going to see anything, but even the non-flowing features looked impressive; it's tempting to come back when the features are operational!

By mid-afternoon we were done, so we grabbed a quick hot chocolate in the cafe and then headed back to the hotel on the tram rather than walking. Spent the rest of the day in our hotel room, aside from venturing out briefly to grab a currywurst for dinner.Read more