Heidelberg is easily one of the most popular tourist destinations in the German province of Baden-Württemburg.  It combines the activity and artistry of a university town with the hustle-n-bustle of a mile-long commercial zone and the presence of one of the oldest surviving castles in the country, all bounded by the  lazing Neckar River.  None other than Mark Twain himself proclaimed Heidelberg to be the perfect city # not too big and not too small # and he frequently stayed there (his name graces a couple local landmarks).

Unlike most locations in this website that I've visited once or twice, Heidelberg has been my home for several years.  It has also been the must-do for the dozen or so family and friends that have paid me a visit over that time.  They've loved it so much that even those who have returned a second or third time still want a day reserved for it.  I understood what they meant.  Before moving to my house in the nearby town of Nussloch, I spent forty-five days living in a downtown Heidelberg hotel, spending the nights wandering the Hauptstrasse nightly and hitting a different restaurant.  Indeed, I can't get enough of the place # I would have stayed there if I could have found an apartment downtown!

When I opened this website in May of 2001, Heidelberg was the first page I posted.  But frankly that page sucked...  I hadn't yet figured out what I wanted the site to be, and wrote it like a half-baked sales pitch, then wrote a gushy piece on the Castle.  (In fact, many of my early travelogues were half-baked and gushy.)  Now that the site has matured to half-educational/half-diary, I decided it was time to go back to my earliest chapters and do them properly.  I especially wanted to redo Heidelberg as I had so many stories about the city that I didn't want to lose.

Over the Spring of 2003, I will expand this travelogue to a planned five chapters, four of them geographic in nature, and one a catch-all.  The Hauptstrasse and Heidelberg Castle chapters are upgraded versions of the original chapters, while Philosopher's Way, Southern Suburbs, and Sights & Sounds are totally new (the latter two are currently text only, photos coming later).  Choose a subchapter from the below map.