Brenners Park-Hotel And Spa Baden-Baden

... form, and the nut man. Even being full, we couldn't pass up the nut man. Imagine every kind of nut coasted in many kinds of goodness. We couldn't even choose, went for the mixed bag. The nutella coated hazelnuts, white cherry chocolate coated walnuts, and the caramelized cashews ranked up there for me. Sorry to say, the liebkuchen just didn't do it for us.

The last pictures are somewhat unrelated, except our mystery came to a ...

... lustig und entspannend.
Zum Schluss sind wir in Urspring noch zum Abendessen eingekehrt.
Katja geht brav in ihren Kindi, kommt kurz zum Mittagessen und ist dann meistens nicht mehr viel zu sehen - immer unterwegs.
Mati hat in Deutsch endlich mal nicht die uralt Schinken zu lesen bekommen. Sie behandeln "Das Parfüm", was er in glaube ich drei Tagen ausgelesen hat. Jetzt fährt ...

... the first night but had to leave since it was the site of Stuttgarts Oktoberfest. We got a hotel room outside of town and decided to enjoy a lil more Oktoberfestivities! This time we didn't join a beer tent but decided to eat our way around. We got Sausuage in a currysauce, Beavertail Pizza, Corn on the Cob and Smoked Salmon sandwiches. It was fun since everything had a twist to it ...

... a path through the side that opened up into a whole slew of gardens and a pumpkin festival, several hours worth of enjoyable walking.

The pumpkins were made into fairy tale scenes - Guilliver, Hansel and Gretel, that sort of thing, life size, made of pumpkins. If we were smaller, we could have jumped in the hay and looked for the needle. We stopped at walking up the tower, but did go up to the hilltop to get a look. And took the ...

... get off early to wait by a cemetery until the bus comes back, and the driver can chuckle at us. The bus goes right up the hill, good to know. We got off the bus and started walking, looking for signs. We finally turned around and saw the tomb right behind us. The bus drops off right at the base of the tomb, also good to know. Anyway, it's a nice walk to the top and a welcome breeze when you get there. And the view was totally worth it.

Last leg of the European jaunt and we've decided to try out the Black Forest...the bad weather was the final nail in the coffin and after 3 days of dripping foggy weather, we decided to jack in the caravan and head to Octoberfest, but more of that later.

So a quick trip to a 500 yr old stud farm started by King Wilhelm the 1st, where they breed beautiful Black Forest horses and Arabs then, Baden Baden to take in the sights of this thermal spa town and ...

We attended a big birthday party this weekend in Stuttgart. It was my boyfriend's grandfather's (Opa, as I now know him) 80th birthday. We celebrated with the entire family in a nice little restaurant in a small town near Stuttgart. I have no idea the name of either of those places.

We had some free time to explore Stuttgart on Saturday morning so we went to the Wilhelma Zoological and Botanical Gardens. It is a massive ...

Caught a night train from Vienna and arrived in Stuttgardt in the morning. Had a great day wandering and seeing the sights. Yet another map from yet another tourist info place. More statues and old buildings (Boring right? Not by a long shot). Still walking around wide-eyed like kids at Disneyland.

... I had my earplugs in, but thought I heard someone whispering German into my ear. It was probably my mind playing tricks on me, but maybe I'm just overly sensitive to this stuff after having that creepy episode in the Canary Islands (see blog entitled "Sleeping with ghosts" http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-en tries/pwong/canaries-2007/1199704560/tp od.html?tweb_UID=pwong ). Or maybe, now I'm a target! Either way, I am NOT staying out this late tomorrow night!

... here start at €70 and this place was €39! My room was tiny but clean and adorable! I imagine this must have been the lady's maid's quarters. Often times the lady's maid would have a cot in a closet off the main bedroom and this totally had this feel and the next day when the maid's were cleaning I was able to sneak a peek at the room next door and it was huge. So yeah...I'm thinking pretty good guess ...