Sommerberg

Off to Heidelberg via train on the 8:35. Heidelberg is only about 50 miles away but decided to take the train to save the hassle of constant GPS navigation and parking once I was there. Turned out to be a questionable decision. :-)

I had always wanted to go back to Heidelberg, a city that I just drove through once and thought it looked pretty and worth coming back to. Train schedules from here (a small town) usually have multiple transfers to get to anything over 20 miles away. I looked on line (very good and user friendly website) and found one that only had one transfer so took that. My host told me that if I parked in Calmbach, a town about 2-3 miles from Bad Wildbad, I would not need to pay for parking. Bad Wildbad has virtually no street parking, all in large parking garages. So left from Calmbach, the train stopped every 5 minutes, filled with commuter folk and those just going to the grocery store. Found a new "best friend" in a kid who worked in one of the towns along the way but was on his way back home to Romania for vacation. 20 something very social and loved to talk about what he was doing. 20 something and speaks 3 languages !!! The 2nd train was a bullet train and sped right along to Heidelberg.

Arrived at the train station, a big and busy place. TI right outside to get a map and transit information. Transportation is cheap here as this is primarily a university town, The famous Heidelberg University. Bus/tram ticket only about $1.60. I took a tram to the Old Town - a large area where most of the tourist sites are located. Walked the Old Town, took the Old Bridge across the Neckar river which flows through the City. Climbed to the top of one of the old churches (Protestant) and great 360 views. Pictures not great as it was cloudy. Sun came out at 4PM. Warm and sticky. Heidelberg castle on the hill above the town is a major tourist attraction. Did not go up there, chose instead to walk across the river to the Philosopher's walk - a lovely wooded walk high on a hill across the river from the Old Town. Known as the Philosopher's Walk as it is where the professors and philosophers from the university could converse in the beautiful green way and enjoy the views of the Old Town and Castle across the river. A truly beautiful spot. Checked out a lot of buildings that are a part of the university. Heidelberg population is 20% students and of the 25,000 students, about 20% are international. I heard a lot of English being spoken from the kids. Also found a place to get my nails done!!

Back to train station for my 7:30PM train - which, when it showed up on the board was going to be 90 minutes late. So I had to get another set of trains that had 2 transfers and did not leave until 8:10PM. One of them only had 8 minutes to get from one train to another. Needless to say a bit stressful but all went well and was home only an hour later than I planed. A very busy day. A day off from tourism tomorrow.

Miles: 8.5
Floors Climbed: 38Read more