Oktober 5 - Stuttgart

RICH and SANDY...send us an email and let us know how you are doing!!??!!

Guten morgen! We walked for miles yesterday to see all of the beautiful sites...the Altes Schloß and Neues Schloß (old and new palaces). We found the cutest Biergarten and both had our first brews in the Fatherland and it was amazing. Had to buy Ryön some new schuhs because the other ones were not cutting it. So we are both wearing Keens. Awesome.

Stuttgart people are so fashionable -- we love it! We took a nap (Rick Steeves would be disappointed) for an hour or so and then had a fantastic German dinner at a place called 'Zepplin Stärbe' where we both savored Schwabian dishes...that sort of a type of regional name. I had the meatloaf which honestly was like chopped ham formed into cakes ala Spam. It was pretty tasty´- the German potato salad was incredible. Sehr gut! Ryön had the Spätzle which is a very traditional dish and is reminiscent of Mac and Cheese but the noodles are potato noodles and the cheese\Käse was more sharp. Fantastich!

Went to bed at 22:30 and I had to order the wakeup call auf Deutsch...Können Sie mich wecken auf sechs Uhr? Can you wake me at 7? Showered, opened the windows and breathed the cleaneset, quietest air known to man. We love this city -- there are hardly any tourists here and most people seem to think we are German. Beautiful design houses...Bosch is based here...clean streets, alles fantastich!

The frühstuck (breakfast) is quite the event. Not your traditional Hampton Inn continental breakfast of packaged cereal and powdered eggs...we are talking THE SPREAD...cold cuts, mueslix with dozens of different fruits, fantastic coffee, juice, eggs, Käse struedel (cheese struedel), curried wurst, on and on and on and on. Loved it!

We left our bag at the hotel to do some more walking and shopping.

OH! Funny story...we are finishing and paying for dinner (you cant leave the bill on the table you have to wait for them to take it again and it takes forever) and suddenly someone knocks on the window...OUR FLIGHT ATTENDENTS from the flight over! They were so nice to us...even liked us so much they gave us a bottle of wine to wish us luck!

We ran outside and hugged them all. The restaurant was a part of the hotel in which they were staying! They had talked about '4F and 4G' all during dinner and how nice we were. Hehehe! We also met the Captain and First Officer. They were going to bed as they take the flight back tomorrow but we thought that the chances of us running into eachother are so slim that it means we are doing something right!

OK...going to sign off now. We are taking a train to München this afternoon because we have a BMW factory tour tonight at 6 p.m. Tchuß!! (you say it like Chews)