A Day in Munich

We were invited by Paul's friends Nate and Mahvish to their ten year wedding anniversary party along the Danube River in Austria, so we're making a week of it! We flew in to Munich and spent a day exploring the city, and now are on our way to Vienna and hopefully a visit to Bratislava.

After landing at 8:30am we caught the train into Munich and dropped our bags off at our hotel, the Pension am Jakobsplatz. Paul visited Munich was back in 2000, but this is David's first visit to Germany. The first thing we noticed was how much construction there was all over town. Buildings are being renovated and new mid-rises are being built. Germany's strong economy is pretty obvious as you approach the city by train. Our hotel was located just off Marienplatz, the historic center of the city, home to the Neues Rathaus (new city hall). Neues Rathaus also holds the glockenspiel, a 19th century bell-tower with carved figures that dance to music on the hour. A large area in central Munich is mostly pedestrian-only, making it a pleasant city to walk or bike around. It's also incredibly clean and organized.

Neues Rathaus of Munich.

The street with our hotel. The colored tiles are a monument to LGBT Germans that were murdered by the Nazis.

An appropriate first meal in Germany! Buttered pretzel with chives.

View from the Rathaus bell-tower.

The Frauenkirche, consecrated in 1494.

Everyone and their brother taking a picture of the dancing clock-tower characters.

After hanging out in the city center for a little bit, we decided to stroll over to the museum district and then over to the Englishcen Garden. Munich has several large museums and we only had time to visit one today. Paul loves Egyptian artifacts, so we elected to visit the Munich Egyptian Museum. The museum was very modern with a small but well curated collection of artifacts. We'd highly recommend this museum if you're interested in ancient Egypt. It's in a new-ish bruitalist building that is mostly underground.

After the museum, we took a 15 minute stroll to the Englishcen Garden. This park, larger than Central Park in New York, goes northeast from near the city center. The park is full of forests, fields and creeks, a couple of large beer gardens, and even hosts man-made rapids that people use for surfing! It was full of people even mid-day on a Tuesday.

Sarcophagi at the Munich Egyptian Museum. 

Englischer Garden scene.

Surf's up!

Some people were better than others, but it looks like a lot of fun!

Lake and flowers.

Chinese pagoda with adjacent beer garden - because Germany!

Lots of streams and greenery.

After strolling through the park for an hour or so, we had a quick currywurst lunch and went back to the hotel. At this point we were exhausted from not sleeping on the plane. We cleaned up and looked around for some snacks to take back to the room, settling on Eataly nearby our hotel and took a nap after watching the Sweden v Switzerland World Cup match (Sweden won). We both woke up to go watch the England v Colombia game in a local bar. This game was super exciting with Colombia equalizing very late in the game to go to overtime and eventually penalty kicks. The bar was mostly filled with non-Germans but every time Colombia missed a good opportunity one table of Germans yelled "NEIN!" Guess they didn't care for England. :)

Late lunch of currywurst, fries and beer in the cute little courtyard at Alles Wurscht.

Watching the Colombia v England match at Paulaner Im Tal.

Rathaus at night. Munich is well lit and very pretty.

Why aren't there more things like this in America?!

Next stop Vienna!

One day in Munich is obviously not enough time. We're sandwiching our trip with this Bavarian metropolis so we'll be back in a week with another day in Munich to finish up the trip.