Welcome to Heidelberg

Well, first you have to imagine a crappy nine-hour flight in the two middle seats of the plane "overnight" to Frankfurt. Then a train ride to Heidelberg. No sleep and now it's dawn. So I was pretty washed out, but resolved to see some sights so as not to lose an entire day. This would have been OK, except the sight we chose to see was the Philosopher's Garden which is accessible from the city by a 20 minute walk up a 50 degree incline known as the Schlangenweg -- the Snake's Way. It snakes up, way up, the side of the mountain.

See, the Schlangenweg looks like this from the inside, which was disturbing for me because you can't really see where you're going or gauge how long it's going to take. However, you can see how lovely it was with all the hanging ivy, which I would have appreciated more had I had any sleep in the past day. I was about to drop when we finally reached a level area.

But is was worth it when we reached the Philosopher's Garden, a lovely gated area in bloom with all sorts of flora.

Isn't this a darling little snail we saw? You don't get to seem them so often stateside, extended eye stalks and all.

And here I am, a little worse for wear but admiring the view of Heidelberg from the garden.

On to more Wednesday pix, better views »