We went to Marienplatz, which is like the town square area. We watched the Glockenspiel for about 5 minutes since we were there when it was set to go off-- it was some music that played and these little puppets that would twirl around. You can see it best in the second picture and if you look closely in the first picture, you'll see it in the tall spire. We went in a few churches and of course climbed one to get a view of the city. You can see the city overall just has more modern buildings. Marienplatz is the open area in the center-ish part of the picture.
We ate lunch at Spatenhaus and it was very good.
We then went to Residenz and I really enjoyed it-- it was amazing how much of it you got to tour! Unlike the other palaces, we got to view over 100 rooms! The palace was built back in the 14th century and where the Wittelsbach rulers lived. Much of it was destroyed during WWII (as was most everything in Munich), so a lot of the palace had to be rebuilt. As with any palace, you'll see it has it's own chapel...of course!
One of the rooms had the flat ceiling painted to make it look 3-D. I took a picture of it cause it looked pretty amazing-- this is all just on a normal flat ceiling, but appears as if it is much taller and ornate!
For a part of the tour, you got to just see a few rooms that contained all of the family's royal jewels and belongings. It was amazing cause I believe they said this diary belonged to one of Charlamagne's grandson's. That means this book is from around the year 1000 or even before-- just befuddles me how ornate it is and that it could be that old! This was one of several crowns that I'm not sure how old, but believe it was from waaaaaaaaaay back then around the year 1000 or so too. I'm just amazed how people created stuff like this!
By now it was late afternoon, so we went to the Hofgarten and English Garden. We were somewhat idiots and decided to walk to this English garden cause Rick told us there was a nice beer garden area to sit and have a drink. We walked FOREVER and come to find out, this park is larger than central park! It was cool though cause on the way to find this beer garden, we stumbled across a stream where people were actually surfing! This was the start of the stream through the park, so the water was rushing out and making waves and they would just take turns surfing for like 20 second stints.
We went to Augustiner for a small dinner and sat with 2 really nice girls from NY- Gina and Marian. It had been a while since we had made some friends, since most of the time in Paris we just ate and kept to ourselves! We ordered some appetizer that was traditional for German's-- I can't remember what it was called, but is basically some bread with raw onions and a cheesey-butter spread. It was okay. The city was hopping that night and we were glad that we did Hofbrauhaus the night before...there was such a mammoth crowd outside of it, you didn't look like there's a chance to get in.
Ok, this post was way too long-- what happened to trying to cut back on my trip recap?!
