After Dublin we went to Munich. The original plan was to go for Oktoberfest, but once I did some quick checks I realized it would take a significant part of our budget to find lodging alone without factoring in the beer. After surveying some other options we decided to go back in August before heading down to Italy. I had been once before, but it was in November and it struck me as a town that might be entirely different in the summer.
We arrived late at night and went to the Augustiner beer hall for our first German brews.
Unlike the Irish beers, these seemed to have an inebriating effect, although it might have been the fact that they are a full liter. I'm not sure if Ali is laughing here because she is surprised by the massive size or if she drank enough to find one of my jokes funny.
We got in late so that was all we managed to accomplish for the night.
The next day we woke up and walked down for the obligatory viewing of the glockenspiel. It was glockenspiel-like.
We also stopped by the Residenz palace/museum. It was an interesting, albeit long, tour.
We went back to the hotel and took out the two bikes the hotel had available for free. Getting free bikes was nice. Getting uncomfortable bikes that made me sore for the next week was unfortunate. I may or may not have whined eventually (alot. but still would not switch with me. mine was quite comfy. -AH)
We stopped off at the beer garden in the Old Botanical Garden for our lunch of official Bavarian food.
Ali got the Schnitzl. It was a lot of schnitzl but it was quite good.
I got the weiss-wurst, traditional German sausage which I learned after I ordered is never to be eaten after lunch. Fortunately it was before noon (or at least still during lunch). Hooray for accidental etiqutte. Don't worry, I made up for it by asking a German guy at Hofbrauhaus how much his new BMW cost (The look on that poor guy's face was priceless. He had absolutely no idea of what to say. AH)
We rode the bikes to the Pinakothek (not even going to look up the spelling) museums which are fortunately only 1 euro on Sundays. It was even more fortunate because I do not spend enough time in museums (either classical or modern art) to make it worth much more than that. They were very cool museums both architecturally and content-wise, but I'm saving up my museum time for Florence and Rome.
Next we rode to the English Gardens. This was one area I remember thinking would be cool in the summertime. Last time I was here we went on a bike tour that went through it and they simply pointed out where stuff would be if it wasn't all closed.
We went by the increasingly famous river surfers. It's very cool to see.
Next we rode by the Chinese Beer Garden. Because it was a Sunday it was extremely packed with people jammed in drinking liters of beer. We rode the rest of the way through the park passed a softball game and naked sunbathers to the Paulaner beer garden on a little lake. We weren't in the mood for beer at this point, but we still walked around to see it. It also was packed with traditional German band playing.
After the long day I was pretty pooped. We went to get pho (only so much German food is necessary for one day. After that we hit the hay early.
The next morning we woke up with a sort of a plan. We walked down to the Marienplatz again and Ali got a pretzel. She also used it to find a shady place to beat the heat.
Next we went to the church with the big towers, Am Dom, and took the stairs/elevator to the top (86 steps, 1 elevator - AH).
We got some very cool 360 degree views of Munich including the Residenz and garden that we had visited the day before.
Next we walked back through the Hofgarten to the English Garden. Despite being Monday, parts of the park were even busier than the day before. Since it was hot (bad day to wear pants), some of the Muncheners were enjoying the river in the park despite the "Baden Verboten" sign that even I understood.
This guy was putting on a tightrope show.
And other people were using this miniwaterfall as a defacto water slide (the original Schlitterbahn?)
At this point Ali was extremely jealous and wanted to jump in. She claims she almost intentionally accidentally fell in. But we didn't have appropriate attire and the river would have swept us about 2 miles down from where we were.
Instead we settled for beers at the Paulaner beer garden we had seen the day before. It was significantly less busy as you can see below.
At this point I was wiped out, although mostly just hot and sweaty because I decided to wear pants (hence the lack of pictures of us). I decided that we should take public transportation back to save time and energy so I could get back and shower. Unfortunately, the city map with the park was confusing and I took a slight wrong turn.
Sadly that wrong turn put us in the tunnel of doom. Although it looks innocuous, it had the largest spiders ever crawling from the ceiling. I was convinced one of them was going to eat us whole.
After getting through the tunnel, I decided we weren't looking for a residential area of Munich that had no indications of public transportation (I took a turn with the map and realized we had been looking for a BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER not a TUNNEL UNDER A HIGHWAY - AH). So we had to sprint back through the tunnel. Eventually we found our way back. And usually things do have a silver lining as we walked through what appeared to be a very cool neighborhood worth walking through during our next visit. Eventually we made it back to the hotel, although I think we walked as long looking for public transportation as if I had just decided to walk straight back to the hotel. Live and learn (mostly learn to not wear pants).
That night we went to a beerhall/restaurant by Am Dom and had delicious bratwurst (and great mustard) and finished up at Hofbrauhaus which I found an obligatory destination although it was pretty quite because it was late on a Monday night.
Next we were off to Bolzano. More soon.
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