On Apr 16, 2:23=A0pm, "Jen C." wrote:
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> =A0 =A0Does anybody have any favorite cities or specific sights to
> recommend?
> Does anybody have any favorite sights that the kids would enjoy?
>
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Since I now live in Stuttgart ( www.stuttgart-tourist.de ) I'll
mention some places to see and things to do that everyone should enjoy
there and nearby.
The Mercedes Benz Museum documents the over 120 year history of this
company in the form of 160 vehicles representing Mercedes through the
years, automotive improvements, racing cars, and cars driven or used
by famous people such as the Popemobile. There are also some racing
simulators. This museum is loved by all visitors irregardless of age
or gender. There is also the current much smaller Porsche Museum
which would appeal mainly to its advocates and racing fans. Stuttgart
is after all where the auto was invented.
The world's first modern TV tower completed in 1956 has an observation
deck.
Wilhelma ( www.wilhelma.de ) is Europe's largest combined zoo-
botanical garden set amidst the nice Moorish architecture of this
former palace. Wilb=E4r, Germany's latest polar bear cub went on
display today. There is also the gorilla orphanage for babies
rejected by their mothers among a lot of other things to see including
fish and insects.
There are hundreds of Staeffele (stairways on the steep hillsides that
formerly used to access the numerous vineyards. Your children would
find them a challenge. Some go on for blocks and some are associated
with pleasant small parks.
The Museum am Loewentor has an excellent collection of the local
dinosaur and Ice Age mammals, and also all kinds of creatures embedded
in amber. In nearby Holzmaden is another excellent fossil museum with
large dinosaur statues outside, and you can collect fossils in the
local fossil quarries.
There are many more excellent museums and good sights to see in
Stuttgart.
The nearby (15 minutes by S-bahn) town of Esslingen
( www.esslingen.de ) has an excellent well preserved medieval old town
center. The children would enjoy climbing the town walls that go up
the steep hillside.
The nearby (15 minutes by S-bahn) town of Ludwigsburg
( www.ludwigsburg.de ) has Germany's largest perfectly preserved (all
original, not a 1950s rebuild like so many others) Baroque palace, the
"Swabian Versailles". There are the tourable royal chambers, four
excellent museums including a fashion one with lots of clothes from
the 1700s, extensive gardens including a fairytale one, porcellan
manufacture and sales (Ludwigsburg porcellan is celebrating its 250th
anniversary this year), and two smaller associated palaces set in a
deer park (several days to see it all). In www.schloesser-und-gaerten.de
as are also the Stuttgart palaces and Wilhelma, and Bebenhausen
Monastery and Hohenneuffen Castle mentioned below, and many other
excellent palaces, castles, monasteries and gardens run by the state
of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The nearby old college town of Tuebingen ( www.tuebingen.de ) is one
of our favorite places to repeatedly visit. It is home to one of
Europe's oldest universities and the hilly cobblestone streets are a
joy to walk around. They also do punting on the Neckar River like at
Oxford and Cambridge. Excellently preserved medieval Bebenhausen
Monastery is just to the north.
In this area is also Waldenbuch with its chocolate factory for Ritter
candy bars. Its museum of art in the form of squares (the SPORT candy
bar shape), some of which moves, is excellent and would be enjoyed by
all, there is also a small museum on the manufacture of chocolate, and
sales at discount prices.
South of Stuttgart are two fairytale-like castles: Burg Hohenzollern
( www.burg-hohenzollern.com ) which is the family seat of Germany's
once most influential family, the Prussian Hohenzollerns; and Schloss
Lichtenstein ( www.schloss-lichtenstein.de ) which was constructed
based on a fairy tale. In this are is also the largest castle ruins
of the Schwaebische Alb (low limestone mountains with lots of caves
and castles- my favorite area of Germany, www.schwaebischealb.de ),
Hohenneuffen, which also has an excellent restaurant with great views
( www.hohenneuffen.de ). There are some summer bobsled runs in the
area, and an amusement park, Traumland. Marbach (Gomadingen) stables
are Germany's oldest state stables and world-famous and visited by
over 1/2 million people a year ( www.gestuet-marbach.de ). You can
visit the magnificent stallions in their stalls, the mares and colts
will be out in the fields, and with pre-arrangement you can arrange
for a coach ride. Further down the idyllic Grosse Lauter River is one
of Germany's highest concentrations of castle ruins, and by its mouth
at the Danube are some excellent Baroque churches, monasteries, and
palaces. You can also canoe on the placid waters of this river
( www.kanutouren.com ).
The Black Forest ( www.schwarzwald-tourismus.info ), Upper Swabia with
its numerous beautiful Baroque churches, monasteries and palaces
( www.oberschwaben-tourismus.de and www.barockstrasse.org ) and the
Bodensee ( www.bodensee-tourismus.com unfortunately, if you choose
English you will no longer have the German side of the lake but just
Switzerland and Austria) are all nice nearby regions to visit.
The nice thing about most of the places that I have mentioned are that
they are great places to visit, but they won't have that many German
tourists, and hardly any foreign ones for a "real" German experience,
instead of the foreign tourist hordes of the Romantic Road.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Heidelberg, and Ulm with its record height
church spire are all also within 100 km of Stuttgart.
For most of the links given, they have an English option, sometimes
hard to find. A few are only in German.
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