Sam and Misty: Our weekend and visiting Heidelberg

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Our weekend and visiting Heidelberg

I haven't blogged for awhile because I've been busy trying to get this house finished up and in order. We had a really nice weekend. Saturday morning, Sam went crazy in the back yard. He trimmed all the bushes and trees. He even cut down a few trees and generally just did a lot of clearing that needed to be done. The neighbor told him he didn't think it had been trimmed in several years. Sam loaded all the trimmings in the truck and we took them to the dump on our way into town.

We were hoping that the rain would hold off long enough for us to get to Ikea, pay for, then pick up the entertainment center at the warehouse and get it home. Thankfully, it did and probably no longer than 30 minutes after we brought everything in the house it started pouring.

On Sunday, we had every intention of going to church. I kept thinking it started at 8:30 (probably because that's what time our church in Hawaii started), but somehow it didn't seem right. We made it to church "on time" and found out that it doesn't start until 9:30 and that day it was going to be held in a different place at 10:00. So...instead of waiting around for 1 1/2 hours we decided to go check out another of the Army posts. We drove to Heidelberg, which is only around an hour from us. Again, I was very surprised by the size of the posts. Very small.

Sam saw signs for a castle nearby, so we followed the signs to this castle. Driving through the old town of Heidelberg, I looking out my window and up the hill I saw it looming over the city. It was really awesome. I was amazed at how big it was. We drove up the hill to find it. I guess I didn't realize how huge the castles were. Almost like a small city within those walls.

One of the corner towers was destroyed I think in the 1600's. You can see the side of the tower that looks like it just fell off and is still there. You can even see hallways in through the tower from where the side of it fell off. It was really neat to see.

Another thing we found really interesting was the large wine vats within the castle. One of them is suppose to be the largest in the world. It holds over 220,000 liters! It's HUGE! They've since made a dance floor on top of it. The picture below is actually the smaller of the two vats. Of course, my dear husband had to be get a picture of him "drinking" from it.

As I've said before, it's really hard to capture all the details on film, but it was a very interesting tour. We did LOTS of walking up and down stairs and hills. We didn't realize how far down we had walked until it was time to go back up. It ended up being a really nice day. We want to take advantage of our weekends here and take the time to visit places like this because we're only here for a limited time. Well, that's about it for now. I've been putting the entertainment center together since Monday. Tonight, hopefully, we'll get it all put together. Here are a few more pictures from our day in Heidelberg.