Munich

Wow! It's been a super crazy couple weeks, and I'm just now getting some photos off my camera in order to blog.  Two weeks ago I met my dear friends Ryan and Teresa in Munich after they had spent several days in Paris, and then we traveled together from there to Salzburg and then to Vienna for the remainder of their trip.  I'm going to do my best to make these entries as complete as possible while still breaking them up into reasonable size posts, so I'll begin now with our time in Munich and then go on to the rest of things, including Thanksgiving!

I took the train from Vienna to Munich Friday morning, and they took the train from Paris, and thankfully we met up in the train station just fine, even without cell phones.  We made our way to our hotel and dropped off our bags before setting out to explore the city a bit.

The Rathaus

We wandered around for a long time looking for somewhere to have dinner.  All of us were pretty tired, and we seemed to keep making the wrong "left/right" decisions while wandering, and not really finding somewhere in our price range that looked good without being too touristy.  Finally about the time we were ready to give up and just eat anywhere with food, Teresa spotted a cute little restaurant and we had a super delicious German dinner.  I really wish I had pictures of it, but I think by that point I was just too excited about the cozy restaurant and warm food to mess with my camera.  After dinner we took back to wandering a bit before heading back to the hotel.  

Munich was in the process of setting up their Christmas markets, so none of the lights in the streets were on quite yet, although many businesses had their decorations up.

The next morning we were sure to have finished our breakfast in time to see the big clock on the Rathaus do its thing...very cool figures doing all sorts of things at a medieval dinner (including the jousting in this picture)

we were not the only ones with this idea... 

Again...giant Christmas tree...but sadly no lights being turned on quite yet

The inside courtyard of the Rathaus

Ryan found the plaque that says Cincinnati is one of Munich's sister cities, so he was super excited.

That afternoon we decided to head out towards the BMW plant and museum and the Olympic Park that is very close to it.  The three of us pretty much love all things Olympics, and we can now add Munich to our list of Olympics cities visited. 

Inside the BMW world...all sorts of fun cars

including this tiiiiiny little one, the door is the entire front.

From there we decided to go up in the Olympic Tower and get a good view over the area 

Looking down on Olympic Park

Looking down towards the BMW factory

The inside of the Olympic swimming facility

The old ticket windows...looking very 1970s

From the Olympic Park we headed back into town and went to the Residenz, which is the former palace in Munich.  It is gigantic, and the tour allows you to wander through just over 100 rooms, which after a while seem to blend together a bit, but we had a great time going through the palace, listening to our fun little audio guides along the way.

Teresa and I are very fancy in palaces

This is one of the chapels inside the palace, and it was significantly damaged during World War 2.  When they rebuilt it after the war, they were careful to preserve as much of the old bricks as possible, so you can see the line where the old materials end and the new materials that were required begin.

A serious table setting

The family tree in portrait form on the walls

After our extensive trip through the palace, we were hungry and ready for the Hofbrauhaus, which was a must see for us especially since we've all been to the one in Cincinnati together several times.  The original surely did not disappoint.

ridiculously large mugs of beer

yum yum

After dinner we took one more stroll through downtown stopping to pick up some dessert to go at a bakery before heading back to our hotel and packing to leave for Salzburg the next morning!