Exploring the area

I can't believe we have been in Germany four days already. We are slowly learning our way around, luckily Mario has been here before so he remembers a lot and plus he is my driver showing me all around.

The weather has been very fall like in the mid 50's to low 60's. The leaves are changing and when your walking around you can smell the leaves. I love Fall. This week looks like it is cooling down to mid 50's calling for rain/snow at the end of the week with a high of 48. Now I wish I would have bought more pants and long sleeve.

We walked around downtown Stuttgart. It had numerous stores including a TK Max (T. J. Max) and a small craft store. The fountain area is called is Schlossplatz The new palace is near the old palace and is used by the state government.  

Since we are staying at the hotel we have been eating a lot of fast food, you can only make so much food in a hotel room with only a small refrigerator. We decided to change it up one night and eat at the Steak House which is attached to the hotel. It wasn't cheap but man was it good! We had crab cakes for an appetizer, then for dinner, I got steak loin with mushrooms, Mac n cheese, and mash potatoes and Mario got a burger. I got a glass of wine which was cheaper than the bottle of water we ordered. I am slowly branching out and trying more options instead of soda all the time. Plus the soda over here is made with real sugar so it has a different taste.

Saturday night we went to a festival at Neckar Park in downtown Stuttgart called Cannstatter Wasen Volkfest. It was the 170th Stuttgart Beer Festival.  It was pretty much like a festival back home with rides and food tents, but here had a few different beer tents. I'm not a beer fan so we didn't explore the tents and plus the lines were huge to get in. We found a free parking garage, saved us 5 euros, and the walk to the festival wasn't bad. On the walk we passed the Mercedes Benz Area (soccer plays here) and the Porsche Area ( performing/shows). We got a waffle with vanilla creme, see below. On the walk back to the parking garage, we saw cars being towed. They used a crane and lifted the car onto the tow truck, they don't mess around here.