After finishing up our house sitting stint in Reichelsheim we arrived in Heidelberg, Germany to a beautiful sunshine-filled day. We checked into our hotel and walked out into the city for a bit of exploring.

Wanting to take advantage of sunshine on a winter's day we decided to head to the very famous Heidelberg castle for a bit of history and guided tour - in English which we were very appreciative of.

I had read about a funicular car that took you up to the castle. Awesome. We had already pre-purchased a Heidelberg card that gives you free rides on public transportation and also discounts on many museums, shops, cafes, and restaurants. I would recommend it for anyone visiting the city. It's quite cheap and we definitely used the great city transportation to get around.

The Heidelberg card that we purchased included a trip on the funicular car and entrance to the museum (the tour is extra fyi). Let me add that Collin has been absolutely amazing guiding us around Europe. I think I've said before that I am directionally challenged. This is not an understatement. Luckily my husband is awesome and has learned each city with ease.

We arrived at the funicular car, swiped our tickets, and chose our car for the trip up.

The sunshine was a bonus as we made it to the top for a beautiful view of the city below. We snapped a few pictures and headed to the castle.

The castle and grounds were quite impressive. We bought our tour tickets and walked over to the small group of English speakers to wait for the tour to begin.

As it is the off season, museums and tours aren't fully booked which Collin and I think is a major bonus of traveling during the winter months.

Collin and I both enjoyed the tour but wouldn't necessarily recommend it. Basically you have to go on the tour to see inside the castle but walking the grounds alone is worth it.

The one fascinating fact we learned on the tour was how much wine the Prince-elect kept stocked at the castle. The tour guide explained that there was a wine cask in the cellar that holds overs 55,000 gallons of wine. I had to see it.

We walk in and see this beast of a cask and think "whoa" that's pretty big. But then we walk around the corner.

Wham! That's a big wine barrel. We even walked on top of it!

We walked through the famous Apothecary museum and found a little gem that many of you might recognize.

Any Harry Potter fans out there?

The Old Bridge in Heidelberg is another must see not only for its grandeur but also as it is a great place to take pictures.

Each person we have asked to take our picture has been so very accommodating and has caught some great moments.

At the edge of the bridge lies quite a funny statue.

Made even funnier by my adorable husband.

We had to take advantage of Germany's cake and coffee culture and ducked into a cafe for a treat.

Much to our luck a few doors down from the cafe was a Lindt chocolate store! Having already stuffed ourselves with crepes we decided to grab some chocolate to keep in our hotel for when we got peckish.

One of my many views of TripAdvisor told me that one of the best restaurants to visit was a little place called Schnitzelbank. We walked around a bit to work up an appetite.

Walking into Schnitzelbank you are greeted with a very warm welcome. I mean it was seriously hot in there. Collin's glasses fogged up and I immediately wanted to run outside to cool off. A very jovial man came over and asked how many people we had in our group. After seeing it was just us he motioned over to a old wooden table and said we could sit at the end as some other people were coming along soon to sit at the other end. Communal tables, cool.

Side note - I was a horrible blogger and don't have any pictures but let me paint you a word picture. Now when I say this place was small I need you to visualize very small. I think I counted a total of about 25 people crammed into a tiny place. It was awesome.

New people came in and the communal table would happily make room for the new faces. We immediately shared shedding our layers as I was about to have a heat stroke. After settling in we started perusing the delicious looking menu. We settled on schnitzel, of course, and a huge salad to split.

The food was incredible, the wine delicious, the people warm and welcoming, and I would throughly suggest anyone visiting Heidelberg to stop in, pull up a chair and enjoy.