Checking Out Stuttgart's Northeast and the Suburbs

Sunday morning started off great with a trip to a local Bäckerei (bakery) for coffee, tea and pastries.  It is very quiet in the city on Sundays since most everything is closed. There were only a handful of places we saw with signs of life. 

From the Bäckerei we headed over to the Schlossgarten again for a leisurely morning walk.  This time we headed northeast all the way to the Neckar River (near where Matt attended the Volksfest last week).

The Neckar River is the 10th largest river in Germany and a major tributary of the Rhine.  It actually flows from South to North.  Along the river are a couple of mineral baths.  Kristin is suspicious of the idea, but they looked quite nice.

Getting to see the river on a lovely day was a real treat. 

We then headed through the Schlossgarten to see the Unterer Schlossgarten (Lower Castle Garden) and the Mittlerer Schlossgarten (Middle Castle Garden).  And to walk off all the pastry we had for breakfast.  There were lots of people out walking and jogging.  We're pretty sure this will become one of Matt's favorite jogging spots.  Kristin will never have a favorite anything related to jogging.  She just prefers to check out the nice scenery standing still in her cute Banana Republic jacket (thanks Emily!).

We are looking forward to visiting the zoo and the botanical gardens that are also located in the Schlossgarten, but we will have to save those for another time.  Instead, we took time to enjoy all of the sun.

We grabbed a quick lunch at San's (near the Königstraße), which had great soups and panini sandwiches, and then headed out for a quick drive through some of the neighborhoods we are considering for our apartment.  Stuttgart is actually very hilly, so we need to make sure that our place isn't too far uphill!  The walk up to where we were standing for this picture would not be fun.

From there we checked out some of the suburbs around Stuttgart.  Sindelfingen and Boblingen are a few miles past Vaihingen (pronounced vine-agin), where Matt works.

Unfortunately for Kristin, the rental car is a standard, so we needed to head to the suburbs for some much-needed driving lessons.  Kristin was only honked at twice (by the same person) and managed to successfully navigate around the villages.  The rental car is much more forgiving than Matt's jeep.

We celebrated her success with dinner at the Rainbow Garden Thai Restaurant in Boblingen.  The food was really delicious!  We need to come back a few more times so we can get carved vegetables with our meal like locals at the table next to us -- on top of their meal was a carrot fisherman with a fishing pole and a carrot fish on the end of its line.  We wish we could have taken a picture, but you'll have to make do with a picture of our meal, which was just a little bit less ornate.

The restaurant also had an amazing saltwater fish tank.