kloh’s posterous

Misc Food Pics from the past couple of days.

           

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Misc_Food_Pics_from_the_past_c.zip (1670 KB)

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Day 6: Nürburgring. The main building, not the track...yet!

                         

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Day_6_Nrburgring._The_main_bui.zip (2240 KB)

I'm not sure why I thought it wouldn't be this big, but the main building to the Nürburgring is huge and impressive. Looks like they are building a roller coaster right in front that goes in to to the building. The grandstands are just behind the coaster location. The interior has tons of rooms that house various exhibits, stores, and what look to be misc. street vendors.
 
It took us a really long time to find parking because there was an actual event going on when we got there. At first, we were going to buy tickets to see that since we were here, but the boy got tired of walking and just wanted to get back to the hotel to rest after we spent an hour or so shopping for souvenirs (another mini die cast car and another key chain for the boy), looking at the various exhibits, and buying our lap tickets for tomorrow.
 
The last shot is our hotel room. The boy is trying to run away from the camera since, as I explained earlier, he no longer wants to be in pictures. Luckily, I can still be stealth about it every once in a while and get him in some.

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Day 6: The drive to Nürburgring.

Hard to believe it's already been almost a week since we've been here. This is the last "long" drive of our trip. Tomorrow, we drive the Ring (in a rented Renault Clio Sport) and the day after that, we drive to Frankfurt to drop off my new toy and fly home. This has been a fun vacation but I can't believe it's already over. Thankfully, the highlight of the trip (aside from getting the car) is still ahead and is something we're both eagerly anticipating.
 
Today's drive was very much like yesterdays with one exception: Rain. It gave me a chance to try out the auto wipers which are really cool. You just turn it on and the speed sets itself automatically based on how much rain is coming down. I'm sure there will be some other nice features I'll discover over time. I still haven't had time to hunker down with the Owners' Manual yet (beyond the quick lookups of things I needed to know about right away). I just happened to come across this wiper thing while I was looking for something else and forgot about it until it started raining. The rain also cleaned off my windshield for me...which was getting pretty full of squashed bugs.
 
Gas in Germany is not cheap. I've filled up 3 times already and each time it's cost me over $100. Of course, it's 95 - 100 Octane so I guess I expect to pay a little premium for that, but still...that's probably twice as much as gas costs back home...maybe more!
 
Once you get off the Autobahn and into the Nürburgring surrounding areas, it seems ALL of the roads are a lot of fun to drive. I was pleasantly surprised by the hilly, twisty route that took us into Adenau. It felt like a mini, two-way version of what was soon to come, hehe.

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Day 5: Photos from the Porche Museum.

                                         

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Day_5_Photos_from_the_Porche_M.zip (3384 KB)

I've never been a very big Porche fan, but continuing in the tradition of this trip, it just made sense to visit the Porche Museum in Stuttgart. It's halfway between our previous stop (Neuschwanstein Castle) and our next one (Nürburgring) so I stuck it in the itinerary. I was also able to find a hotel just a couple blocks away so that worked out nicely. However, the hotel (Achat) was probably the smallest/worst one of the entire trip. Pretty happy with all the others, but this one didn't do much for me.

Despite my lack of Porche interest, they definitely have some nice vehicles here. I was especially lovin' the Carrera GT and 911 GT1 (both silver). It was also cool to see how small/low the cars are in person with the boy standing right next to them. In some cases, they looked like the perfect size for him, hehe. My favorite part of Porche's have always been the brown leather interiors. Pics 7 and 15 above reinforce why.

The boy added to a silver Carrera GT to his 1:18 Die Cast Car collection and an RS Spyder keychain. I'm a little bummed that he has now gotten it in his head that he does NOT like being in pictures, so there aren't as many with him now. He keeps running out of the frame if he sees me beginning to take a pic. Another idiosyncrasy he seems to have developed is a distinct dislike for or annoyance with little children. This entire trip he's been complaining when he hears any of them talking or making noise of any sort.

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The boy has one thing on his mind during lunch...and it's not eating.

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Day 5: Driving notes. This car just screams speed.

The previous drives were fun and all, but since there was either traffic in the city or we were driving some nice twisties (with speed limits), I hadn't had a chance to open up the car...until today.
 
Realizing that I'm still in my break-in period, I didn't want to push it too far, but being on the Autobahn and having VW's scream past me just seemed like a lost opportunity if there ever was one. I had to see what this car is capable of...and let me tell you, it's FAST. Not just the regular fast either. I was up to 130 before I even realized it. The car handled amazingly well. Didn't even feel like we were going that fast at all. The ride was smooth and the engine purr sounded great. I only pushed it up to about 5000 RPMs (redline is at 8300) so I didn't even get close to it's potential. Stupid break-in period!

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Day 5: Waiting for Sommerrodelbahn to open.

                   

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Day_5_Waiting_for_Sommerrodelb.zip (2578 KB)

Parking was really horrible around the hotel/castle area so we decided to leave Sommerrodelbahn for the next morning. We got there around 8:45, right after we took the car pic with the castle in the background, but the Sommerrodelbahn wasn't open until 10:00. I suggested we walk around and check out the other stuff around the area, which we did for about 10 minutes but the boy just wanted to wait...literally, by the gate...for about an hour. Yes, he was excited about this. Good thing I had my old iPhone loaded up with some games. He played Fast & The Furious.

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Day 5: The boy narrates a video of me, almost eating it on Sommerrodelbahn. Enjoy.

Here's a short clip where the boy explains how I almost fell off my sled, hehe. I was too busy trying to find him in front of me to film and not paying attention to my own sled. I could have sworn I let out a yelp when it happened, but according to the video, I kept my mouth shut.
 
Good stuff.

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The Boy. The Ride. The Castle. The...me.

Here's a couple of pics taken from “the spot” recommended on Bimmerfest with Neuschwanstein Castle in the background. This just happens to be a private road but we got there pretty early in the morning so there was no one around. Worked out well. One guy came riding by on a bicycle – I think to check up on us, making sure we weren't doing anything weird – but other than that, it went pretty smoothly. I worked fast, hehe.

The car actually had a bunch of dew on it since it was parked outside the previous night and some birds decided to use it for target practice so I was a little worried about how the pic might come out. But for the most part, you can't really see any of the “flaws” (except for that reflection of the dork in the bumper of the second pic).

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The boy sleeptalks on vacation again. This time, angry!

Every once in awhile, the boy sleep talks. Twice, it happened on vacation and I was able to jot it down on my iPhone since I usually have it on for the next morning's alarm. I'm transferring them to Posterous so they can reside in a more permanent place.

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