Stuttgart Christmas market

Dinner is served!

On Saturday the girls and I went to the Christmas market in Stuttgart. Because it was a fairly long train ride and the markets are so crowded, E decided it would be better (and more relaxing) if he stayed home with the littles. We arrived at around noon, had some pastries, and immediately hit the market. One of the special things about Stuttgart market is the roof decoration competition for the booths. Here are a few that S liked. After a while she stopped taking pictures of them. Most of these roofs are at the beginning of the market. As we moved closer to the center they became more and more elaborate. There was no way to take pictures of all of them - especially since it got darker and more crowded and the booths closer together as we went.

We thought of T when we saw the teddy bear.

The roof from the fish stand.

One os S's favorite roofs. She loves nutcrackers!

This poor kid. We don't know how he got up there or back down.

The highlight of the day was ice skating. At first S didn't quite remember how, but with some practice and encouragement from R she was zooming around the rink. I've never been able to ice skate, no matter how much practice and encouragement, so I watched. After an hour or so I wasn't having as much fun as they were anymore and gave them a fifteen minute warning. They suggested I treat myself to a hot wine since that would warm me up and improve my outlook. I did go get wine but remembered too late that I'm not supposed to drink on my medication so I felt more like I'd had three. So the girls got extra skating time while that effect quickly wore off.

After skating the girls were hungry. I got them some potato pancakes and applesauce which held them over until we found this. S wasn't interested so R had one to herself and loved it! I don't know what kind of fish those are. Mackerel?

I had promised S hot chocolate, so we followed along the market looking down the side streets for a cafe. No luck. Finally we decided to go back toward the station to check out a toy store before it closed. We saw a cafe that we decided to go to on the way back to the market. I bought the toys, we went to the cafe, and no one would wait on us. It was so weird. When we tried to get the attention of the servers it was like they were deaf. So we left and went back to the market. Here are some of S's shots of the booths.

I can never find name things for the kids. But we did see a mug for L!

I think it's nice that Walburga and Siggi will have mugs, too.

We even saw an Adolf mug. I bet they have a hard time finding mugs!

Cookie molds. I am tempted because they are all so pretty, but I think even rolling out cookies for regular cookies can be a pain. I don't see myself cleaning these out with a skewer for each cookie.

Here is the coolest decoration we saw - an entire building advent calendar!

We left the market early enough to find a cafe on the way back to the station. We considered ourselves very lucky that we ended up where we did. The hot chocolate was very good - frothy and not too hot for the girls. They also had apple strudel. We were on the second floor looking down over a wide pedestrian shopping street with lots of pretty decorations and people to watch. While we were there a small brawl broke out and the police came. It was very dramatic and the girls were fascinated.