Munich

We arrived at the Marienplatz in downtown Munich via the park 'n' ride train system. (Love Europe's public transportation). This is the Rathaus (town hall) famous for giant glockenspiel (see below). We arrived with plenty of time to grab our brezen (Bavarian Pretzels) and watch the 11:00 song and dance.

Next, we wandered over to the lovely Frauen Kirche, a church famous for having the devil's footprint inside. (???)

Here is Amy, reading aloud the English translation of the Devil's Footprint Story.

Then, over to the Viktualienmarkt where we enjoyed browsing a grand variety of little home-made booths with everything from octopus tentacles to exotic fruit juices.

There were lots of yummy things to taste along the way, including an assortment of pretzels, sausages, and some really stinky cheeses.

We enjoyed the local food immensely, though most of the time we didn't know what we were eating, exactly. I can tell you that we ate a lot of sausage, dumplings, and roast meats. The menus were, of course, all in German and very few of the Germans we met spoke much English. So we did a lot of pointing and guessing. Fortunately for us, we liked just about everything we ate. Especially sausage and strudel. And schnitzel... with noodles.

Emily ate a lot of leberkassemmel throughout the week. It tasted like a hot dog but it came in a loaf shape that got sliced up and served on bread. It was especially tasty with the local Bavarian mustard - a sweet mustard, that I asked for everytime it was available. Yummy!

We stopped at Max Krug in downtown Munich to admire its extensive collection of cuckoo clocks. Yes, after much consideration, we narrowed down our choices and eventually purchased one, though I didn't think to snap a photo of it before we had it shipped straight to my parents' house in America (thus avoiding European VAT tax of almost 50 Euros). We haven't decided yet if we will bring it back to England with us after Christmas or if we'll let my Mom babysit it for the next couple of years...

Munich Opera House

Residenzplatz

Hafbrauhaus



Love this sign: it strictly prohibits smoking, bananas, cherries, sausages and ice cream cones.

Our final stop in Munich was the toy museum back at Marienplatz.

The museum was reasonably priced - something like 6 euros for all of us - though the museum itself wasn't as large as we had expected. Still, we enjoyed the vast array of old fasioned toys. The doll houses were especially intricate.