Nuremberg

Today I tagged along with Markus to Nuremberg. He had to go to some meeting type thing, and I had nothing better to do, so what the hay right? Well, I had fun.

We got there at about 8:30, but none of the stores opened until about 10, so I walked around...tried to get my bearings (kind of successful) and looked for a cute cafe where I could sit, read a bit and wait for the stores to open. Well, to my shock, most of the cafes weren't open yet. The only thing that I could find that was open was a Starbucks. Well, what the hell...I haven't been to one since the Munich airport, so why not? I sat in there drinking my Chai Tea Latte and eating a blueberry muffin until about 10. It was quite nice. Reminded me that I should probably make some blueberry muffins myself since they are so freaking good!

So, the clock struck 10...time to shop. Now, this isn't what you might think. I'm not a spending-money-shopper. Nope, I'm more of a walk-around-look-at-everything-shopper. I buy things that I think warrant a purchase. Things that really interest me.

So, I started off the day at Karstadt (big department store). There are two things that I really like about Karstadt. First, they have the most wonderful kitchen area with the best pots and pans and kitchen gadgets, and I simply start drooling, so I can't really spend too long there...too dangerous, if you know what I mean. But I did see this wonderful set of non-stick pots and pans that would just be so wonderful.....ahhh....oops...sorry. Started daydreaming...

Ok, the second thing that I love about Karstadt is that when they have a grocery store in the basement, this usually means that they have an "American" section. I was definitely hoping that they would have some canned pumpkin. No such luck. They just had the pre-mixed pumpkin pie mix stuff...no good. Then, I saw that they had Old El Paso stuff too! Score! Unfortunately, they had no green chilies! I knew it was too much to hope that they had RoTel, but if you just add some green chilies to canned tomatoes, that is basically RoTel right?

So Karstadt was a bust, but it had lots of cool stuff to look at, so that side of it was fun. On to the rest of the city.

So if you've ever been to Nuremberg, you know this is a shopping haven. However, I just felt really overwhelmed. I went in to may 4 stores out of the possible thousands. However, the stores that I went in were really cool. I made a purchase at one of them of the most amazing lotion. The thing that I really liked about it was that all of the soaps in the store are handmade, most of them are vegan, and they don't have any preservatives. So, these are some of the granola aspects that I like. Plus, this lotion is amazing! The store is called "Lush". The lotion that I got is called "Dreamy Creamy". Seriously good stuff!

So, I kept walking around, and walking around, and I guess that I just really wasn't into the whole shopping thing today. I'll blame it on the weather. It was rainy all day...and cold...and basically miserable. So, I knew Markus was going to be done at about 12:00, so around then, I went over to the parking garage and waited for him. There was a river nearby, so I thought I'd just go and see what's floating by. There was a lot of random stuff...oh, and I must say that the river was REALLY HIGH....much higher than normal, so that might, just might, explain some of the weird stuff that I saw...What I saw is as follows:
4- dead birds (poor things)
3- tennis balls
1- flip flop
1- kid's shoe
1- Ramazotti bottle
countless numbers of assorted alcohol bottles
countless logs (trees really)
1- swim noodle

Really, it is the swim noodle that gets me. How random.

So that was my day.