This weekend I travelled with my roommates to Baden Baden, a beautiful city approximately one hour south of here. It is a very ritzy, upscale retirement community that is most known for it's baths (spas).
We started out by going on the train from Heidelberg to Karlsruhe, and from Karlsruhe to Baden Baden. Everything was going perfectly until they came around to check our tickets. on the train from Karlsruhe to Baden Baden. We showed them our ticket that we had bough a few days earlier and poor Amanda was the one who had to handle it (which she did very well :)). I guess what had happened is that we had gotten on the wrong train to Baden Baden, a faster train that actually gets you there in a fraction of the time. Our penalty was to pay a fine, unfortuantely. I guess it could be worse, but maybe that's typical for people's first time haha.
Our first day there we went to our first Spa, Caracalla Therme. It was more of a go-at-your-own-pace type of deal. There were all different types of pools, spas, eucalyptus-filled steam rooms, infrared lights to sleep under, etc...needless to say we were soooo relaxed! We spent the rest of the evening walking around the picturesque city and seeing all that the city has to offer.
The second day we hopped on a bus at 11am to go to the station to double check our departure schedule for that evening. However, we got on a bus that was going to a different Bahnhof (trainstation) in the opposite direction, and we ended up being on that bus for almost an hour and a half and made a huge circle back to where we had gotten on the bus originally. It ended up being a really good mistake because it was basically like taking a bus tour of the area, which is absolutely breathtaking. After that we mozied (sp??) around Baden Baden some more, going inside many different cafes, bakeries, chocolate shops, and clothing stores. Finally, we made our way to Friedrichsbad! This was an amazing experience. We were there for about 4.5 hours and had the most wonderful time! There are 17 different stages of the spa experience and it's in an old Roman building/structure that is, once again, breathtaking. I cannot believe how amazing it was!
Finally, we headed back to Heidelberg.
