The Majestic Heidelberg Castle May 25

Today we ventured out to Heidelberg. It was 1 1/2 hour drive from our house.
The drive to Heidelberg was just beautiful.  Spring in Germany is so green. 

We are inside the courtyard at the Heidelberg Castle.
Doesn't this look like a post card.  Just amazing.

I was telling Jeremy this would make a perfect Picture for our Christmas Card.
Bastian's in the courtyard.  

This is the remains of one of the towers.
In 1630 This Castle was transformed from a fortress to a big beautiful English Castle

We got to the Castle pretty early. We signed up for the 11am English Tour.
Our tour guide was Heagar. She was from The Netherlands.
She was super funny and loved my kids.  She just kept talking and talking to them, I love it when the Tour Guides take a real interest in the kids.  Way to go Heagar.  

Look how grand this castle once was.  It's just so Majestic to me.
This poor castle was destroyed three times.  Twice by the French in 1693 but the real tragedy was in 1764 when lighting  hit it and the Castle burned for 3 days and 4 nights.  

You know just hanging out on the castle wall.

Something cool about the stones.  Each and everyone of these stones were hand carved.
Can  you see the carvings in the stones?  That is the stone cutters signiture so if people admired his work they could come to him and also who they needed to pay. If you look super close you see two holes.  Those wholes are how they moved the stones. Very interesting.

Frederick, He was one of the owners of the castle.

The Bell Tower

Look how Ginormous this Wine Barrel is.  It holds 220,000 liters!

Me and my beautiful girl and the twisty stairs.

Look at the little people compared to the huge barrel. 

This is the view from the other side of the court yard.  Heidelberg is Gorgeous. 

This is the tower on the other side of the courtyard.

These are all the different Fredricks states that lived in this castle.

You have to look kind of close but there were 178 stairs that we walked to get up to the top of the Castle.
We were parked down all those stairs.  But look at the view we got as we walked up all the stairs.

The City of Heidelberg is just amazing.  I think I want to  live here.

Here is the Old Bridge.  It's just beautiful from on top of the Castle. 

This is the entrance to the garden onto of the defensive wall.

The family symbol was The Lion.  Hegar told us a funny story how the lion took on the character of their owner and one guy was always drinking wine and always drunk so his lion was always happy and hiccuping.  Ha!

So sad to see this Majestic Castle in ruins.  

Jeremy loved this blue tree. 

This was one of the Gates into the Palace Gardens

This was the view of the Castle from the Gardens.
Nope this is NOT a post card. I took this picture.

Another perfect Christmas Card Picutre.

The kids loved running in the open gardens.  

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.  I love these three kids so much.