We arrived in Stuttgart on Sunday February 21st, 2010 around 12:30pm. The first thing I noticed was that it was warm. Well, relatively speaking. It was about 40F, but compared to the 20F in Warsaw it was great. The hotel we stayed in (picture on left) was picked by Chris just on a whim. Chris had to go to Stuttgart for business and we were originally going to stay on base but then that changed and we ended up in this wonderful hotel. Not only was the hotel clean, the staff friendly and scrammbled eggs and sausage offered with the free breakfast the hotel accidentally ended up being next to a metro stop and walking distance from downtown Stuttgart. We couldn't have gotten a better hotel if we tried. They even spoke English at the front desk! Shaelyn especially enjoyed the free breakfast because one of the hotel staff absolutely adored her and fixed her her own private pot of hot chocolate every morning.
Now, we didn't know what kind of rental car we would end up with. We got extremely lucky. We got a mini with extra trunk space. Chris, Shaelyn and I have always been interested in driving a mini. What better luck than to get one that the government paid to rent. I didn't actually get to drive it but it's a very nice care. It was diesel and did this really strange thing when ever you stopped and took your foot off the clutch - the car would cut off. At first Chris and I thought that we had been given a defective car but magically when you pushed the clutch back in the engine would start again. It was a way for the car to save gas during city driving. Chris and I both decided that this gas saving feature was pretty awesome. It also had heated seats which were great for my bum!
Across the street from the hotel was this awesome church that had gargoyles on it. Shealyn had never seen real gargoyles and thought that this was the coolest thing in the world. She wanted to know when they came alive and flew around. She wanted to watch them. Of course we explained to her that that was only in fairytales. I don't think she believed us. 
These are two of the gargoyles on the church. The spiky things on their heads are to keep birds from landing and pooping on them.
This is a picture of the church at night from behind. The church has a lake around the sides and back of it. This picture shows the church reflecting off the water at night.Next blogisode (like episode but because it's a blog - blogisode - I thought it was cute) I'll talk about what we did in Stuttgart and show more pictures some with Shaelyn in them, some Shaelyn took herself. She's becoming quite the photopgrapher. Bye for now. Jen L
A couple of weeks after we arrived in Warsaw we went to this wonderful park called Lazienki Park (pronounced wajeankey). We had heard that they had squirrels, cute little birds and peacocks. 
The birds of Lazienki Park are very similar. They are about the size of a canary but they are mostly black with some blue and some white coloring. If you put bread in your hand and stand near a bush of these birds with your hand open and horizontal to the ground the birds will fly to you hand, land on your fingers and very gently take the food out of your hands. It was an awe inspiring event. 
