After visiting Cancun,  Cole and I thought we could handle the Germany winter for a short weekend, but we didn’t quite know what we were getting ourselves into when we planned our trip to Stuttgart, a town in Southern Germany. Cole got tied up at work so we ended up running through the international terminal to make it to the gate. Thankfully, we made it just in time and got two seats in first class, which was amazing experience in itself.

We arrived an hour early and got a great rate a little outside of the city center and right near the Mercedes-Benz museum, which we wanted to explore anyways so it worked out well. However, the hotel was not exactly next to the Metro as advertised and we had to walk quite awhile in the snow, but it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t an adventure and at least it was pretty with the snow.

We started out exploring Stuttgart by heading to the Mercedes-Benz museum first; we spent a few hours learning all the history of the company and viewing all the cars. It was cool to see the evolution of the company, from a basic car to mega-buses, emergency vehicles, and much more. Below are a few photos snapped from the museum:

After the museum, we explored a bit of downtown Stuttgart. We walked along Königstraße  – a long, pedestrian street that runs right north and south through the city center. We walked in the square where the Schlossplatz sits, an old military building built back in the 1700s.

Due to the extreme cold (hence the ear warmers 🙂 ), Cole and I actually spent most of our trip exploring different biergardens which were amazing. My favorite was one called Brauhaus Schonbuch, which had long family style tables and delicious beer. Needless to say, we spent quite a few hours here.

After our beers, we were starving and decided to try to out a restaurant we had passed earlier which was already crowded at 5PM. It was called “Vapiano” and was delicious. It was italian where you order your food from different stations (pasta, pizza, etc) and then wait for them to make it in front of you before taking a seat. We had to wait quite awhile since it was so packed, but it was definitely worth it. After enjoying our delicious meal, we walked around the city center a bit before being so exhausted that we decided to head back via train to our hotel. After getting confused in the metro station on which train we should take, a nice lady told us which stop to get off. We followed her directions, but little did we know, we had to walk another mile or so but it was by the river, so despite the cold, it was still enjoyable.

The next morning we woke up early and all the roads were iced over. We headed to the bus station, which would take us to the train station to head to the “flughafen. After sliding around the streets (picture Cole and I ice skating with our suitcases – very comical) we made it safely to the airport and headed back home to Atlanta!