Germany (and France) 2014. Coming Right Up.

"It is magical to get together with friends you have a long history with, who know you from parts of your life others have never seen. What a blessing good friends are; past, present, and future."

~unknown

Have you had enough fashion posts lately? Have you gotten through all the posts about my trip to Japan and Hawaii? If not, click on the categories on the right side of the blog. But, I have more travel posts for you. I know, I know. I've had a lot of photo-dumping travel posts as of late. I promise that I do live a normal life. I have a normal job. I do normal things. And I will get back to posting more "normal" things. I just enjoy traveling and I've had some sweet opportunities to do so. And I like to document it all on my blog because someday, I'm going to print this baby in a book. Then, I'll have a scrapbook and journal to look back at and reminisce. Cool right? I've never been a cut-and-paste-a-flower or layer-three-colors-of-paper-under-this-picture crafty scrapbooker. I'm into memories with clean lines. So...someday, a book.

Anyway.

On New Year's Day, Wednesday, I flew from Salt Lake City direct to Paris, had a three-hour layover and then flew on to Stuttgart, Germany to meet up with KDJ at Fred and Linda's house. This was my second trip to visit them. You may recall my first trip in October 2010, when we went to Oberammergau for the Passion Play, was a rather magical trip.

Once again, I flew on SkyMiles, but this time I lucked out with First Class booking on the way there. Since my trip was going to be short, I was so grateful for the extra room and full flatbed recline of First Class so I could get some sleep and adjust myself to the time difference more quickly and easily. It worked like a charm and I can say I had very few ill effects from jet lag after I got there. Also as the plane was descending into Paris, we were coming through some clouds and every in every cloud we passed through, there was a rainbow. Every. Single. One. I had this overwhelming feeling of peace and hope. Renewal that comes with a new year. And a feeling that this trip would be just as magical as the last.

Flying into France.

Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport.

I arrived in Stuttgart on Thursday night, January 2nd at about 5pm after watching a beautiful sunset 30,000 feet in the sky. Since I was the only one in First Class on my flight from Paris to Stuttgart and I carried on my only suitcase, I was the first one off the plane and the very first one out the door. I didn't even have to go through customs because I'd done that in Paris and with all the open borders between EU states, I sailed right through and walked out right as Fred and Linda walked in to meet me. They whisked me home where I dropped off my stuff and then we were off to meet Kate and some of her friends at Breuningerland, which is a large shopping mall. Kate and I ate pizza with a few friends from the Stuttgart International Ward: Emily, Janie, and Kristen. They were there for after-Christmas shopping. The stores were open until 10pm, which was pushing it for me. I started getting sleepy around 830pm, but I pushed through. I was also feeling a cold coming on, so Emily walked me straight over to the German Apotheke and helped me get some good throat lozenges and Zink tablets to help keep the cold quick and easy, which it was. That stop at the Apotheke turned out to be a lifesaver.

When I first arrived, one of the first things Linda said to me was that she hoped I hadn't come to Germany to rest because she had the next four and a half days all planned:

Friday: Colmar and Riquewihr, France
Saturday: Rothenburg, Germany
Sunday: Church and then to Heidelberg directly following
Monday: downtown Stuttgart and The Ritter Sport Factory (sadly, this didn't happen because we all forgot, despite talking about it all weekend, that Monday was Epiphany or Three Kings Day, a holiday in Germany, so everything was closed.
Tuesday: Fly home. Yes, it was a quick trip.

As you can imagine, and if you're a follower of this blog you'll know, I have numerous photos (like a few hundred). So if you're ready for several posts of photo-dumping, stay tuned. First up with be a few posts about our Friday, January 3rd day trip to Colmar and Riquewihr. I have 94 pictures from Colmar alone... I'll try to pick only the best ones. But still, I'll probably post 50, so get ready.

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