We checked into the hotel and by 11:00 were waiting at a bus stop just outside the train station (the hauptbahnhof) for our “hop-on hop-off” tour of the city. We skipped the first stop because it was so late in the day and got off at the Marienplatz. This was the city center with the New City Hall (the Rathaus) with the half-hour-long or more chimes, the famous Glockenspiel. We arrived just in time for the chimes to start playing. They filled the square and transfixed the hundreds of people who were enjoying the Christmas market or going about their business. We bought a glühwein and sipped it while the Glockenspiel went on and on.
When the chimes finished, we bought some street sausages, over a foot long, and ate them hurriedly before getting back on a new bus. The bus wound through several tight squeezes, and we enjoyed the heat it provided.
Our next stop was Schloss Nymphenburg, our first palace of the trip. Although the statues in the garden were boarded up, we enjoyed the snow-covered grounds. Then we went inside and marveled over the gorgeous interior.
After Nymphemburg Palace, we saw the Olympic stadium and got off at Schwabing/Siegestor, where there was supposed to be an artist district and an English garden. There was a lovely victory arch where the bus let us off… and then nothing. We couldn’t find the garden, the Walking Man was too far away, and there was no artist district in sight. So we stopped in at the only restaurant we saw, Mario’s Pizza, and ate an extremely garlicky pizza. We hopped on the bus again, feeling cheated that we skipped some other stops for an area that held no interest.
We went back to the hotel. We talked about checking out some bars or night clubs and getting a feel for Munich’s nightlife. But at 6:30, jet lag finally crashed in on us, and we went to sleep. We slept the whole night through.
Munich was one of my favorites.
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