TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

I did a little evening stroll in Karlsruhe city centre one night, well actually on my last night in the city. The Karlsruhe Palace (Karlsruher Schloss) was built by Margrave Charles III William of Baden-Durlach in 1715. The weather hasn’t been cooperating much in this part of Germany. I only had rain showers and wet snow throughout the week that I was there. As I was working during the day I stayed mostly indoors. It was not so bad at all but would have been nice to have dry evenings when we went out to eat at night. The city was quite safe to walk around, and during this last night in town evening stroll, I managed to take a few pictures. I especially like the pictures I took of the Karlsruhe Palace, which was the highlight of my stroll. As it is well lighted at night, the palace looked so magical and stunning. Enjoy the pictures! Bitte. Street art on Zirkel. Very catchy sculptures sitting on poles on one of the side entrances of the L Bank, a state bank of the...

I have just arrived home from Karlsruhe, Germany last night. I stayed there the whole week for work related stuff and I managed to add in some pleasure and sightseeing on my last day in town. Because it snowed (wet snow) on the last day, which was yesterday, I decided to spend the afternoon indoors and went shopping. The beautiful former Post Office of Karlsruhe is now called Post Galerie , one of the impressive shopping malls in the city. Karlsruhe has several shopping malls and shopping streets but this stately building beckoned me to come inside. At the entrance lobby of the shopping centre is the big European clothing retail chain called Primark. The former Post Office of Karlsruhe (Deutsche Bundespost) is now a shopping mall called Post Galerie on Kaiserstrasse. This is what you see when you enter. The Irish-British Primark has a very good location in the shopping mall. The retailing 'cheap high fashion' powerhouse will soon expand to the US. I knew Prima...

I am reminded that my Museum Card which is valid for 1 year will soon expire. I bought this last year as a challenge to myself to discover more museums in the Netherlands. The card costs about 54,95 Euros and even though I was successful in the ROI side of things, I still felt that I fell short from the challenge. That I wasn’t able to visit all the museums in the country that I wanted to within a year’s time frame. It is just difficult when you are working fulltime, when you have other things to do in the weekend and when some weekends (well most actually) you just want to relax and do nothing. Moi here with a wall size painting  by American artist, Sol Lewitt. One of the museums I visited last year was the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (translation: Amsterdam City Museum). It is the 3rd most visited museum in the Netherlands after the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum. Here I saw paintings of Van Gogh, Mondriaan, Monet, Picasso and Rothko. There was a collection of UFO-...