Stuttgart with an 18-month old

We are taking our 18-month old DD to Karlsruhe for Christmas to visit my in-laws. We will have plenty of time to wander around Stuttgart with DD. We will take her to the zoo but are wondering if there are other kid-friendly museums or even indoor malls where she could walk around freely? Her main interests are walking, interacting with people and touching things so any place with a lot of room to roam around would work.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

|||

Breuninger - one of the biggest department stores in Germany. Including the König-Karl-Passage (mall).

www.e-breuninger.de/haeuser/stuttgart.html

stuttgart-rundgang.de/Templates/IN/Panorama/…

Mercedes-Benz-Museum

http://www.mercedes-benz-museum.com

Museum am Löwentor (natural history - fossils)

naturkundemuseum-bw.de/stuttgart/index.html

A %26quot;one room%26quot; museum. Enough room to roam around. And at least some of the exhibits like the dinosaurs and the mammoth should be of interest for her. By the way: impressive huge local content of fossils in this museum.

|||

I wouldn%26#39;t call the Karl%26#39;s Passage in Breuninger a mall, but the Christmas tree with snow falling on it is nice there. The Koenigsbau addition across from the New Palace on the Schlossplatz is more mall-like, with several levels of shops. Besides the museums mentioned by abalada (both the Mercedes Benz Museum and Museum am Loewentor are excellent), the Linden Museum of Ethnology has nice exhibits, and there is a special exhibition on evolution at the Rosenstein Museum, and an Ice Age exhibition at the Wuerttemberg Art Society%26quot;s building with the golden stag on it on the Schlossplatz which has special activities for children for which your child should be too young.

If you visit Stuttgart ( www.stuttgart-tourist.de ) on or before 23Dec, definitely visit the Christmas Market which has a small real steam train which young children love to ride as well as several other rides suitable for this age.

Personally, I would just visit what interests you, as most children will get little out of a place that is visited unless you prepare them ahead of time for what they will see. My two year old grandson enjoyed the gorillas most at the zoo ( www.wilhelma.de ), because some of his books had gorillas in them, and largely ignored a lot of other animals older children and adults would find interesting.

Two shops that may interest you are Korb-Meyer for children%26quot;s clothes on Schulstrasse close to the Marktplatz, and the large toy store on the NW corner of the Marktplatz. All should also enjoy the Markthalle with sights and smells of gourmet food from throughout the world. Several fruit vendors were nice enough to give my grandson free miniature bananas.

|||

Thank you both for your replies. Looks like we have several options!