More pictures of Stuttgart

I was too caught up writing Oliver's birthday post that I hardly mentioned about Stuttgart. Initially, I didn't thought much about Stuttgart because it was just supposed to be a form of 'distraction' for Oli and also to visit Evangeline, Oliver's cousin. But here's my take on Stuttgart eventhough our visit was a really brief one...

Unlike previous days spent in Paris as well as Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart welcomed us with a nice weather, I think the most pleasant weather during my whole two weeks in Europe. Just the right amount of warmth and sunshine. I remember walking along the avenues or fine squares or whatever you call it, on the right side were typical buildings, still impresive nevertheless, on the left sides were benches to lounge, park with gazebos, a pretty fountain, statues, and of course, peoples were just miling about. We had lunch at this chinese-buffet restaurant, it was crowded, so I guess business was good. Oliver met a family friends and caught up with them. There are two castles in Stuttgart city centre; Old and New Castle. We made a short visit to Old Castle. Took a few pictures. Evangeline and Sebastian suggested we go visit this park which is one train station away and so we took a train and arrived at this place. The funny thing was the park that we wanted to visit, well half of it had been scraped to nothing. So it was just parched land. Well, half of it. The other half was still maintained but required a bit of walking to do. But it was worth it because the park was beautiful and it has this tiny acres where they planted tulips of pretty colours. But again, we were running a bit late as we need to catch the train back to Stuttgart so as not to miss our train back to Kaiserslautern. And thank God we didn't or else, it'll complicate the surprise birthday party. I guess, that's pretty much Stuttgart for me. I guess I'll have lots more to say the next time I visit it. Hopefully. Until then. Pictures up in no chronological order.

 Building with nice tree

 Another building. (I'm terrible in remembering names of building)

 This was taken from a tower overlooking the whole park and you can see bits of tulips garden.

 Up, up we go and Sebastian managed to conquer his fear of height!

 Pretty tulips!

 With Sebastian and Evangeline

 In the middle of a square avenue

 Water fountain

 Trying to pose with the tree. Failed.

 Pretty flowers...Don't you feel happy just looking at them...

 The Tower

 Two hearts interwoven...

 

 A pink tulip

 A slice of Amsterdam's Kaukenhof's....

Oh, if we had all the time, I would have took hundreds of photos here alone.

Instead, I have to settle with this.

and this. :)

Day Trip to Stuttgart and Oliver’s 25th Surprise Birthday Party

Two weeks prior to visiting Oliver, I engaged several of Oliver’s close friends in Kaiserslautern to plan a surprise birthday party on 8th May, a Saturday. It was quite tricky in the first place because Oliver was also planning a birthday party himself. He was planning to have a grill party on Saturday. So, I came up with a master plan. I told Oliver since I’ve missed his birthday for the past few years; I suggested that we spent the day to ourselves by going for a day trip to Stuttgart and we could celebrate his birthday the day after, on Sunday after church. He was initially reluctant because he told a few of his friends but I told him that he could inform his friends to come the day after. So he agreed. Good boy. So that being settled, I communicated with Nicholas, Chelsea and Sonja on Oliver’s surprise birthday party and we came up with these; Black & White Theme, venue at Drew & Chelsea’s residence, some cooked dishes by Nicholas and tapas by Chelsea & Sonja, guest lists (this was tough, but thank God for Nicholas) and all I had to do was distract Oliver. The plan was Oliver and I will make a day trip to Stuttgart, Chelsea to ask Drew to sms Oliver and invite us for a dinner at their place at 7-ish pm, so we’ll head to their place straight after Stuttgart.

When the day came, we went to Stuttgart and met up with Evangeline and Sebastian.

So far so good. Oliver still did not have any clue at all. He was constantly on his phone though trying to arrange with some friends for the grill party on Sunday. I felt bad but hey, it’s all part of the grand plan. After spending what I considered a brief time in Stuttgart, we took the train back and reach Kaiserslautern at 7.30pm. We walked to Drew and Chelsea’s place which was just minutes away from the train station. When we arrived at their place, I noticed the drive way was clear, very clever of them because Oliver might have guessed if he had seen lots of cars on the driveway. We walked up a flight of stairs and when we opened the door, everyone went “SURPRISE!!!” and OLIVER WAS SURPRISED!

So, the grand plan works and everyone wished Oliver, we catch up over wonderful food and drinks prepared by Oliver's wonderful friends.

Birthday cake made by Kelly was amazingly delicious.

Friends of Oli's who came and followed the Black & White Theme except for few. :)

We took group pictures.

Oliver received a coffee machine that he’d been wanting to get.

And yes, he was a very happy birthday boy.

We did have the grill party the next day.

 

:)

Sweet Escape: Paris Day Three

It’s Wednesday. Having learnt not to trust the weather forecast, we decided to put on layers of clothes complete with our thick coat.

Today’s plan was to visit Louvre and Champs Elysees. We went to Louvre late morning and thankfully, the queue was not too long. Upon entering Louvre Museum through the glass pyramid main entrance, one’s bag needs to be screened for security reason. We paid a fee to enter Louvre’s Main Museum. There were a few other museums within Louvre with special exhibitions, but we didn’t plan to go for it. Soon, we were inside Louvre’s Museum. We started walking through the hall displaying Greek sculptures. There were abundant of them. All sculpted in marble white stones. Out of all, I only recognized Zeus, having recently watched Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thieve and The Clash of Titans. There were other interesting sculptures as well, most of them almost naked.

Throngs of people around; locals, tourists, and school children on their field trip.

We entered a series of hall. This time there were abundant of oil paintings. About hundreds of them all displayed against each four corners of the wall, hall after hall. We were initially awed by the first few paintings, the intricate manner in which it was painted centuries ago, but soon after, there were just too many of them that it’s hard to pinpoint the significance of one’s painting over the other. It didn’t help that every description of every displays, be it sculptures, paintings or crafts were all in French.

We walked through the hall, passing many more paintings until we came to hall and saw at the far end of the wall, above hundreds of heads and cameras, the original Monalisa Painting.

After having seen Monalisa painting, we felt that our mission in Louvre was accomplished and so we made our way out. This time we were heading to Champs de Elysees, known as one of the most expensive avenues in the world. We stopped by a café settled within the park and ordered brunch; coffee and baguette/sandwich.

Champs Elysees Avenue has lines of high end fashion boutiques, expensive restaurants and cafes, cinemas and theatres, and other commercial stores on both sides. On both end of the avenue are Cleopatra’s Needle and Arc de Triumph.

A group of youngsters were entertaining the crowd with their smooth dance moves.

Arc de Triumph is this gigantic arc in the middle of a huge roundabout. Again, like other attractions in Paris, it was crowded with locals and tourists admiring it, taking pictures of and with it and harassing it. No, just kidding.

Anyways, after taking pictures of Arc de Triumph, we had our early dinner in Pizza Pino, an Italian restaurant. I ordered Pepperoni Pizza with a sunny side up and Oliver ordered some pasta with Shrimps. Both were delicious. The service was good. Waiters were friendly. I had the feeling that the waiters treated us good because they thought we were like food inspectors. When Oliver took out his DSLR, the waiters were looking at us taking photo of the food. They even called their manager on duty and probably told him that we were food inspectors. They kept coming to our tables to ask us if the food were good, they gave us Chill Oil when we didn’t ask for it and so on.

After dinner, we took a leisurely stroll at the southern side of the avenue. Here, one can enjoy the sight of beautifully arranged gardens with fountains and some grand buildings including Grand and Petit (Petite) Palais (Palace). Both were huge in regardless. We walked across a broad sturdy bridge with beams at both end of the bridge and gold plated statues of a horse at the tip, passed through buildings of nice and expensive looking apartments (I wonder how much it costs to stay in one), and continued walking.

Petite Palace

Grand Palace

We came back to Louvre glass pyramid, looking at it one last time.

As sun began setting, I look at Paris. I’m not sure if I’ll ever visit Paris again.

Oliver is visiting it again in June with two friends. I’ll definitely miss Paris. Those brief time spent in Paris was memorable. Our last night in Paris, we met a friend of mine, local Parisian, a couchsurfer I hosted a couple of months back. We chatted the night away over beers and cocktail.

That’s how we spent our last night in Paris.

The next day, we got up to walk the street of Paris one last time. We had coffee and croissants for breakfast at Starbucks. Soon after, checked out and head to the train station, back to Kaiserslautern, Germany.

That marks the end of our Paris trip together.