More walking than we planned on

Sunday, June 08, 2014
Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Breakfast this morning was similar to the one at Locarno - plenty to choose from. There were boiled eggs with deep pink to red shells instead of cheese. The pink shells are to differentiate the cooked eggs from raw eggs (at some places you can cook your own soft boiled eggs, came across that last year) - this is a Swiss invention we were told. We wanted to get away at 8.23 so the guy did breakfast early for us (at 7.30 instead of starting at 8 - lazy people!). A 12 minute walk to the station and the weather was beautiful.

[Just an aside about smoking over here - they smoke everywhere, and is really gross . Says this ex- smoker. lol. The hotel at Delemont smelt of cigarettes in the foyer - a real put-off; at another place my towel smelt of cigarettes. Yuk.]

Caught the ICN train 1615 from Delemont to Basel and arrived at 8.53. Found the train I'd planned to take to Kahlsruhe, and as we were going down the escalator to platform 11, I heard something about "if you want to get off at Karlsruhe take the train to D.... on platform 10". The sign on platform 11 showed Karlsruhe and 2 guards told us it would stop there, so we boarded. Then an announcement in English and it didn't mention a stop at K from platform 11. So we hightailed it to platform 10.

The change of trains at Karlsruhe for Heidelberg was easy - next platform. I'd intended putting our bags in a locker at Heidelberg and spending 4 or so hours there; but we decided to carry on to Heilbronn. There was only a 3 minute connection time, but we only had to cross to the other side of the platform . This one was a RE (regional) train and it was packed in the second class section. We had the 12 seats in First class all to ourselves - not that it was all that salubrious, but it certainly wasn't crowded.

Have I mentioned that we've often had an entire 30 seat carriage to ourselves in First Class? It's a great time of year to travel - before the busy summer.

The train Heidelberg to Heilbronn was along a river and quite scenic. Today was very hot (32 most of the time but got to 35 in the shade this afternoon in Heilbronn) and the river was being used by boats of all sorts; as well as picnics and people fishing on the banks.I quote from somewhere "From the historic and charming university city of Heidelberg the train
runs alongside the river Neckar and offers impressive and ever-changing
views of the river, castles and woods."

The Hotel Central is very close to the station and is quite swish by ou standards! We paid 64 Euro for a double room including breakfast on booking .com - on the back of the door the price is 87 Euro. So we were booked in by 13.00. Went walking around the town just after 2.30. We stumbled across a Turkish Festival in the square behind the "kirche" - I bought 3 baklava for 1.50 Euro (despite our lack of cash). I don't understand why the Catholic church (Kitianskirche) has a soldier on the top; the clock in the square was a bit of a let down after Nuremberg last year - I saw the rams butting heads 4 times and Bryan saw the bell chime 4 and the man on the left hit his bell 4 times. Time for a beer don't you think? We tried to places that we'd seen and neither would accept card! Same happened last night in Delemont, so we were down to 15 Euro. Less than 3 drinks each. So back we walked to the only ATM we'd seen in our 2 hours of being out and about (also the only one mentioned when we asked where there was an ATM). That's when we saw the sign with the temperature at 35 under the trees. Also when we saw the great blow up boat - they had a small barbq going on board!
Had a couple of drinks at "Hartmans Cafe.Bar" close to the hotel - seemed very local (next to the kid's park).

Heilbronn suffered a lot of bombing during the war. And it's not small with a population of over 123,000. It's on the river Neckar.

P.S. They wouldn't accept a card at "Pasta e Basta" across from the railway station - just as well we used that ATM. For dinner, we decided to stay close to the hotel as so many places weren't opening as it's a Sunday. There was a Greek place that probably did very well - but twice/thrice the price of our 6.50 pizza & calzoni and 3 Euro half litre beer!
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Comments

6
2014-06-09

its Karlsruhe

anne.nathan
2014-06-09

It's also Kilianskirche and not what I wrote - and it's a Protestant Gothic hall church with origins going back to the 11th century. No time to find out about the soldier at the moment

2025-02-10

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