A Visit to Munich

We decided to drive down to Munich for the day on Saturday to check out Germany's third largest city (after Berlin and Hamburg). Munich is the capital city of Bavaria and is home to approximately 1.53 million people.

Two interesting revelations on the way:

It's fun to drive fast!

170 km is about 105 miles per hour.

John was a little disappointed he couldn't go faster on the Autobahn.

Gas is expensive in Europe! This works out to little over 7 dollars/gallon!

We checked the weather forecast before we left and packed accordingly for a nice 75 degree, sunny day. The drizzle began during the two-hour drive there and the downpour began just after we checked into our hotel and started to explore the city. Coming from Portland, we never carry an umbrella and quickly realized that we needed one, as we were not at all dressed properly with sandals on our feet and no jackets! Here are some pics of the hotel room.

We spent some time exploring the BWM Museum to escape the rain. The Museum displays the technical development of the cars and motorcycles, together with the history of BMW itself. Many old cars and motorcycles are on display and there are also films and videos on display in English. There was an 80 minute tour available, but we (well mostly me) were not interested enough to participate in that. The weather cleared up, so we decided to continue walking outside. We looked into getting an umbrella, but they got 65 Euros in the BMW gift shop, so we passed!

We took the subway to the Olympiastadion where the Olympics were held in 1972. We paid a couple Euros to have access to the stadium and walked around for a bit. It was cool to sit in one of the stadium seats and imagine what it would have been like in the midst of the hustle and bustle of olympic competition!

After that, we took the subway to the downtown part of Munich to walk the streets (in the rain). We finally broke down and bought an umbrella at one of the stores, but it was more affordable at the price of 15 Euros. We went to a restaurant called Augustiner am Platzel where we had a variety of German foods including a trio of different sausages, spaetzle, potatoes and beer. When our bellies were full we continued our walking tour of Munich, just exploring and meandering.

Later we went to the Englischer Garten Müchen (The English Garden), where the landscape was very pretty and we visited two biergartens. The first one only sold wine (weird) and did not have any food so John enjoyed a glass of Reisling and we moved on to the next one. They offered two sizes of beer, a .5L and 1,0L. I told John to get the small one, so he did, but quickly regretted that decision because it just wasn't as fun to get the small one. Those of you who know me well know that I pretty much hate beer, but I decided to bite the bullet and offered to drink the small one if he wanted to get the large size. He was happy to oblige!

happy...then...really happy!

The things I do for love....

We stayed in the city center until about 10 pm or so and then went back to the hotel for the night, stopping for a little snack before turning in. We were going to visit Dachau on the way home today, but decided to save that for another day when we have time for the full 5 hour walking tour. It only runs twice a day and our timing was not right today. I think the walking tour will be more educational than just walking around anyway, so we are hoping to get back there soon.