Heidelberg's Ritter Hotel: Spend a Night with The Knight

The Entrance 

Time to stroll...

A little wine...

some people watching...

Some light lunch at an outdoor cafe...

Please scroll down for pithy descriptions and even more photos...

Ah, Heidelberg, the home of a luscious old town (Alt Stadt) with centuries old buildings, walking and shopping galore and reeking of history.  Everyone knows about The Church of the Holy Spirit, dating to the 12^th Century.  Used to be a basilica, and for a time was both protestant and Catholic, but since 1936 has been exclusively protestant.

You might not know that right across from the church is another building of interest, but only if you’re looking for a four star hotel, with a long history, and a a façade and interior right from a movie set.  Talkin’ about The Ritter Hotel, or by it’s full name, Zum Ritter St Georg.  Built by a cloth dealer in 1592, The Ritter (The Knight) was first mentioned as a guesthouse in 1681 and is possibly the only home to have survived the many wars that have swept through this city.  Louis XIV’s French army did a great job of wrecking the Heidelberg Castle that overlooks both the city and the Necker River, but somehow they missed The Ritter.  Probably raided the castle’s wine cellar and decided on ‘just one more’ before they stomped into town for pillaging and wenching.

History, check.  Grand hotel, check.  But aside from the awe, what’s special about The Ritter.  In a word, location.  Located on the main walking street, with its plethora of superb shops (chocolates, perfumes, tobacco, stylish clothes, jewelry, Christmas ornaments), and open-air cafes, The Ritter is a great place to stay and suck in the full experience of Alt Stadt Heidelberg.

The Ritter’s small façade belays the expansive interior, with its winding corridors and good-sized bedrooms.  Small touches of stained glass here and there, bunches of fresh flowers, and solid wooden stairs let you feel the history of the place.

The bottom floor of the hotel is all dark wood, white tablecloths, and suits of armor.  When you look from the street, through leaded, beveled windows, it’s like looking into another world, another era. You'll also be looking at the restaurant. Although by all accounts the food is wonderful, we just couldn’t resist the open air cafes.

When you step out the Ritter’s front door, onto the cobblestones,  you find a wide walking street a couple of miles long, with prime spots for wine guzzling and people watching.  The old city's arms are wide open and The Ritter Hotel is a perfect base of operations.

Never fear.  The Ritter's modern touches, such as elevators, and internet help the weary traveler.  One thing I don’t understand, however, is why a luxury hotel would charge extra for internet, when many cheaper hotels offer it for free!

By the way, should you choose to take the train, there’s a Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof (main station), but also a stop for the Alt Stadt.

Spend a night, stay the weekend, spoil yourself at The Ritter and the wonders of Heidelberg.

huffin' n' puffin' on da River Neckar...

Bicycles are all over this university town 

The river is flows right by the city

View of the tower on the old bridge

Walking streets galore..

You'll find spots of beauty everywhere.

Inside The Ritter's dining room

This and the following shots are all inside the hotel

Up A Lazy River - Down by the Mosel

View from Grevenburg Castle, looking down on the Mosel and Trauben-Traubach

All those half-timbered buildings

Part of the weinfest parade

Reisling Grapes

A touch of heaven, with a ray of sunshine

Lots of wonderful cities on the Mosel River, most of them with a nearby castle or two.  Nothing wrong with any of them.  Great towns.  Great fun.    But for my money, time, stomach, and wine-guzzling capacity, there’s no beating Bernkastel-Kues.  Bernkastel has it all.  Delightful restaurants, weinguts (wine sellers) galore, cobbled streets, and half-timbered buildings that date way back to when they really built half-timbered buildings. Which is to say, before developers built half-assed, half-timbered imitations in every new subdivision  in America, with names like Chop Down the Maples Estates, and Vermin Village.  Bernkastel also has a fabulous weinfest every autumn.  The streets bulge with people, their stomachs packed with wine and food from the hundreds of vendors lining the streets. Lively, ever smiling, good-tempered crowd.

But, the real star in the Mosel Valley is the river itself.  Meandering nicely from France’s Vosges Mountains, past Metz and onward, northeast, past Luxembourg on the left, and through Germany for 300 odd miles, it meets the Rhine at Koblentz.  The river has two names, Mosel (in German), and Moselle (in French). This river has more pleasing curves than Marilyn M in a mini-skirt. Graceful and ever flowing.   Cut stone castles rising from green caped crests.

Enough about the Mosel!  Enough about the half-timbered city that you’ll never ever forget for the rest of your life.  Let’s go after the good stuff and I mean wine!  Well, the truth is, everything is connected.  The Mosel Region (one of 13 German wine districts) has steep sides, in some areas approaching a 65 degree incline.   Wherever humanly possible, the valley walls are lined with battalions of grape vines.  The first time you get a glimpse, the great expanse of vineyards almost takes your breath away.  Not only do farmers and helpers drag large baskets of grapes down these slopes every year, but to combat erosion, they also haul baskets of soil up.  Sweaty work.  Calls for a drink.

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know there are two words I use repeatedly, Celts and Romans.  The Mosel Valley is no exception, but this time we’ll leave out the Celts. 

Wine has been grown here for thousands of years.  The sandy, loam, packed with shale, the blend of mild winters and mild summers, the perfect amount of sunshine, make this one of the premier wine growing regions on earth.  The heavy concentration of slate holds the heat and provides excellent drainage.  I’m told it also flavors the wine.

Take another look at the vineyards and you’ll notice they seem to be broken into little plots.  Nothing wrong with your eyes.  Most of them are family owned and have been for generations.   Several varieties of grape are grown, but the staple, by far, is Riesling, accounting for more than half the wine production. Only two percent of the wine from the Mosel is red; the rest is liquid sunshine.  It’s said experts can sip a Mosel wine and identify which part of the valley it came from.  Something about the shale in the soil and the flinty taste of the wine.  To tell the truth, except for rock salt, rocks pretty much taste the same to me.  But, the Mosel wine is delicious, no matter which patch of land it came from. 

So, a question I’m always asked:  Is all Mosel wine sweet?  No.  It runs the gamut from sugar sweet to as dry as any French or Italian offering. Generally, Mosel Wine has a little bit lower alcohol level, and I find it smooth, with little aftertaste.   Next question:  Must you actually run the gamut?  Only during gamut season. Other times of the year, you must run amuck.

If you’ve read German wine labels, you may be wondering, what words like Qualitätswein and Spätlese mean.  On the other hand, you may be too drunk to focus. Here’s a thumbnail sketch, but I warn you, this is not in any sense the end of the story.  Germany and the European Union have many, many specific rules for wines.

Kabinett - light wines from the main harvest, semi-sweet to dry.

Spätlese - means late harvest.  Späts are semi-sweet, generally sweeter and fruitier than Kabinett. There are also some full-bodied, dry Spätleses, labeled trocken..

Auslese - means select harvest, and is made from selected, very ripe bunches. Semi-sweet to sweet. There are some dry (trocken) ausleses. It’s versatile and can also be a sugar-sweet dessert wine.

Beerenauslese – Made from hand selected berries.  Very sweet dessert wine.

Eiswein (ice wine) – made from hand-selected grapes that have frozen on the vine.  Has the same level of sugar content as a Beerenauslese, but unlike Beerenauslese,  Eiswein uses grapes that are not affected by noble rot.

Trockenbeerenauslese - is made from berries shriveled on the vine, virtual raisins.

Here are a few more terms, that are essentially bureaucratic labels having to do with ensuring wines come from certain regions, with certain sugar and alcohol levels:

Deutscher Tafelwein – Table wine.

Deutscher Landwein – German country wine..

Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA)- quality wine from a specific region.

Prädikatswein – the highest quality of wine.

           Now, Mr, Miss, Mrs, or Ms Phelps, your assignment, if you should decide to do something really wonderful, is to visit the Mosel Valley and report back with a full belly and a smile on your face.  Go ahead!  Face the challenge like a man, a woman, or a non-gender specific.

Strolling the Streets of Heidelberg

View from the Castle

Some of the best strolling streets around!

Chruch of the Holy Spirit

Wonderful Pastries

Fresh fruits and vegetables all year 

One of the most famous pubs in the world

The Magnificent Castle

           

             

           

             For mere pocket change, you can jump a smooth, immaculately kept train, sit back, and watch the beautiful countryside stream by, then alight in one of Germany’s most picturesque cities, Heidelberg, a magical place that comes complete with a swiftly flowing river, an ancient university and an anciently matching downtown.  Much of Heidelberg's old section hasn’t changed since the 17^th Century.  Do your job!  Get off the beaten track and get lost in those twisty, turny lanes. 

Have a quiet, unhurried lunch at a quaint restaurant, and let some of that famously delicious wine roll down your tongue.  Stroll the cobblestone streets.  See the old bridge (and the monkey), the Church of the Holy Spirit,  those waist altering pastry shops and open air produce vendors. Ho-hum, just another glorious day trip in Deutschland.

            No telling Heidelberg’s real age.  When the Romans arrived, the Celts had already settled and left.  When the Germanic tribes pushed south, the Romans pulled up their tents, stopped building roads and baths, stone cities, and Fiats and headed back to Rome. But, pre-historic people were here even before that.  In 1907, a jawbone of Homo heidelbergensis was discovered that dates to about 500,000 B.C.E.

            I know what you’re thinking.  If you can give us an age for an old codger born half a million years ago, can you offer a guess about the university?  And, we ain’t talkin’ about the one in Tiffin, Ohio!  Ok.  You win.  Heidelberg University was founded in 1386, making it the oldest in Germany.  Today, it’s a thriving, research oriented school, and Fifty-five Nobel Laureates are directly associated with either the university, or the city.  There’s a big foreign student population and you’re likely to hear dozens of languages all over the city. 

            But, there’s more to the Alt Stadt  (old city) than just the university.  As you might guess, where there are students, there is beer and Heidelberg has two very famous student pubs, Zum Roten Ochsen (The Red Ox Inn) and next door, the student tavern Stepp’l.  Bismarck, Mark Twain, John Wayne, and Marilyn Monroe all tossed back a brew or six at Zum Roten Ochsen, so you’ll be in good company.

            Heidelberg’s place in history keeps growing.  Take the old bridge, actually named Carl-Theodor-Bridge.  Built in 1788 to replace many wooden bridges built and destroyed by floods over the years, it was again destroyed by German soldiers in 1945, only to be rebuilt in 1947.

            But, the centerpiece of Heidelberg is the grand and prominent castle/palace overlooking the Neckar River and old city center. Because the Königstuhl (king’s throne), the hill sitting about a hundred meters high, offers both a commanding view and relative security, the Celts, the Romans, and the more modern rulers all built fortresses, churches, and other buildings there.  The ruins you see were constructed, destroyed, and reconstructed over a period of over four hundred years.  The French forces of Le Roi-Soleil, Louis XIV, did real damage during the War of the Palatinate Succession.   One of the back towers looks as though it were cleaved by a giant sword.  Over the centuries, lightening strikes also took their toll.  When you visit, don’t miss the Grosses Fass (big wine barrel), holding 58,000 gallons, or 221,725 liters.  Next to the barrel is a wooden statue of Perkeo.  Ask about him. The Apothecaries' Museum is another charming spot of pots and potions.  Glance at the courtyard fountain, with columns from the palace of Charlemagne, who, in addition to all that killin’, plunderin’, and pillagin’, famously said, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”  Still searching for that second one, bro. 

When you walk through the restored gardens, remember that the German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe walked there, too.  The garden may have been what he referred to when he wrote, “Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.” The beauty of the castle continues with stage productions during the year, including The Student Prince.  (Check schedule).  To get to the castle, you can walk, or take the funicular (chain pulled) railway.  The castle is open 8:00 a.m to 5:30 p.m. daily, but check for the particulars before you go.

            Hey, stollin’ all those streets, seein’ those sights, climbing to the castle, all develop a healthy thirst.  Time to head to the Roten Ochsen.  Prost!