Stuttgart

Last weekend, we went off to the German city of Stuttgart with 4 of our friends from work.  The train journey down was only 2 and a half hours, and it flew by in the company of good friends, beer and Linkee (which I won!).  We had decided that we were off 'dry January' and the diet just for this one weekend only, and we sure made the most of it!  We arrived at our hotel (a Park Inn - very nice) at 10pm, so just stayed in the hotel bar drinking wine and eating takeaway pizza.

On Saturday, we had a breakfast of pastries from the near by bakery, then went off to climb the tower at the main train station.  On the way, we passed the square above, where thousands of people were peacefully demonstrating about anything under the sun you could think of!

The top of the tower was covered in 'love padlocks'.

Then we went off to the world's largest pig museum!  Yes, you read that right!  It was a random collection of kitsch pig themed memorabilia, and I loved how random it was, although the 'pig erotica' section of interestingly positioned pig ornaments was slightly odd.

I loved the pig tram...

There were, of course lots of stops in pubs and breweries along the way, and a very nice German pub lunch, and Italian dinner.

It snowed overnight and we woke to this lovely view.

We went for brunch at a mexican restaurant, which had everything in a buffet style from a fried breakfast, to chilli, to cakes, to sandwiches.  We got our money's worth and then hopped on the tour bus.  Matt started feeling ill on the bus, so we decided to get off at the Mercedes Benz museum for a wander around while the rest of the group continued.  I'm glad we did, because the museum was fantastic!  Classic cars leading right up to modern day Formula 1 cars, and everything in between!

The 'celebrities' gallery had this World cup winning football tour bus, Princess Diana's Mercedes, Hitler's Mercedes, the Pope Mobile, and the Jurassic Park Lost World car!

These are all the Formula 1 safety cars, which Mercedes have made for many years.

The middle and bottom left cars were the ones that Lewis Hamilton won his Formula 1 world titles in, and the bottom right is the car Heikki Kovalainen won his title in.

These are Formula 1 cars through the ages...

... and this is the car that broke the world land speed record!

It was a great museum and a great weekend filled with laughter.  We didn't get back until 10.30pm on Sunday so we were very tired for Monday morning's work!