The last two stops of our June trip in Europe were Heidelberg and Cologne (both in Germany).

We left Ravensburg and caught a train to Heidelberg, a few hours north. Heidelberg is an historic small town famous for the impressive castle that overlooks it. Nestled in against step forrested mountains, built along the banks of the river Neckar, it is quite a pretty spot.

Heidelberg Castle from the old town. 

Heidelberg is another town that was spared damage during the Second World War leaving the large old town intact. The town is long and narrow, squeezed in between the river on one side, and the hills on the other. There is a long pedestrain street running the full length of the old town.

After exploring the old town for a bit we made the steep walk up to the castle. The castle itself is quite large and pretty well preserved. The views from its walls were worth the walk on their own.

The view from the castle

We spent the rest of the day wandering around beside the river, and through the old town.

The next morning we walked back to the station to catch a train to what would be our last destination - Cologne. The journey was quite scenic, travelling though wooded valleys and over long viaducts above grassy fields. The train itself was nice too, a high speed train with a really roomy interior.

Colonge was the first city that we had visited that had significantly damaged in the war. The central city had almost been completely wiped out by bombs. In total more than 250 raids took place against the city. This has resulted in some parts of the city looking very modern including the hotel that we were staying in.

Crazy modern buildings

The main attraction in Cologne is its Cathedral. Construction first began in 1248 but was not finished until 1880 (with long periods without progress in between). It has the largest facade of any church in the world and has the second tallest spires. It is so large that it completely dominates that skyline and is quite hard to get a photo of without cutting parts of it out!

The Cathedral

The Cathedral is Germany's most popular tourist attraction, averaging 20,000 visitors per day. We climbed the 533 steps to the viewing area in the spires, 100m above the ground. It was a cramped and narrow space to climb which was made harder by the two way traffic. A lot of people there did not look like they should have been exerting themselves so strenously...

Looking up inside the spire

The view from up there was good but not worth showing here. The Cathedral itself was most impressive. It's hard to describe the scale of it. Everything is too big to take in at once. After climbing the tower we went inside the Cathedral for a look. The height of the ceiling was impressive.

Inside the Cathedral

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Cathedral is that it managed to survive the war. Although it was hit with bombs several times, the structure remained standing.

Aside from the Cathedral there wasn't a whole lot else to do in Cologne. There were some cool food markets near we were staying which was fun for a while but otherwise I think we had pretty much covered it in our day.

It had been a good week away. We had been to three countries and five cities. The weather had been perfect the whole time. The Interrail pass made getting around really easy and is something I would definitely recommend.

The final part of the journey was a train through to Brussels and then on the Eurostar back to London.