Stuttgart; Sunday, 24 July, 2011

After a filling breakfast I headed out into town and straight back out again to Schloß Solitude on the outskirts of the city centre. I went round on one of the guided tours, but didn’t get very much as it was in German and, unlike a lot of other palaces around the country, they didn’t provide an English text so I was only able to make out about a fifth of what was being said.

From the castle I caught the bus back into town and the wandered over to the station to take in the views from the top of its tower. They still have their exhibition about the massive changes they are hoping to make to the central station, but recent news and the slight issue of money appear to have taken the shine, and likelihood of completion, off of the project.

From the station I wandered down Königstraße and through the palace gardens to the impressive Neues Schloß. Unfortunately, this massive palace is still in use (albeit by the state rather than any royals.) However the next door Alt Schloß is now home to the Baden-Württemberg state museum so I popped in there for a look around.

Having done all of that my feet were feeling a little tired, so I decided to rest them for a short while by taking the Stuttgart tour. Run by the local bus and tram company the multilingual tour runs over two routes that operate as a figure of 8 over the city. The Blue tour takes off towards the north and on its return becomes the red tour to do a southern circuit.

I did both tours and by then was feeling suitably refreshed so I went for a wander around the city centre, eventually finding myself walking through some of the parks that for a U around the city centre.

By the time I finally left the Killesberg Park it was getting quite dark. However, by pure chance, I exited quite close to a U-Bahn stop with a train going straight back to the hotel.

Given that I’d grabbed a bite to eat in one of the café’s in the park I took that as a sign and went back to the hotel for an early night.