Yesterday, Saturday, Steffi and I drove 1.5 hours to Heidelberg to see the castle.  It is the most beautiful castle of all I've seen.  We toured in interior rooms, the courtyard, passage ways, towers.  The castle has a moat, now dry of course, houses the world's largest wine vat or cask which is several stories high (round).  We ate lunch at the outdoor restaurant overlooking the courtyard, sitting in the sun.  Other castles I've seen have very stark looking buildings, this one is baroque and the most important Renaissance structure north of the Alps, ornate, and decorated.  First built in 1214, it was occupied until the 1700's. Over time the buildings decayed ( thanks in part to two lightning strikes and subsequent fires) and to me the most spectacular sites are the walls with empty windows, with the sky showing from behind, maybe four stories high or more.  There's a huge round tower which a chunk fell off of.  The artist, Turner, painted numerous paintings of the ruins and Twain wrote about it. Once it was uninhabited, the residents of Heidelberg began taking the stones away, as if it was a quarry, until a poet- artist came to the castle, named Wolfgang Muller von Konigswinter, who argued for the restoration of the castle. Later a French count, de Grainberg, oversaw the beginning of the preservation. The citizens in the town below stopped taking away the stones, and slowly it was put back together.  The castle is 260´ above the town on a hilltop, and for us to get there, we climbed a staircase of 303 steps ( fifteen or so stories) , and then more steps once inside.  So today, Sunday, it a real day of rest for me.  I'll probably take a walk along the river later today, but it's overcast and may rain.  No shops are open on Sundays, nor tomorrow which is a religious holiday. No shopping until Tuesday.  I have everything I need.  I've attached photos on the next couple of pages.