Day 8 in Munich

Day 8 in Munich

Sue woke me up at 9:30 and said we had to be at breakfast now, so I got up and ready to go in a record time.  We had a very nice breakfast, lots of fruit.  After breakfast, Sue and I headed to the Apple store to look around and then met up with the other girls at 11:45 at the Marienplatz to see the Glockenspiel do its thing at noon. We had front row seats since the other girls arrived before we did.  They spent their time having drinks – Paula had Coke Light, Sarah had hot chocolate and Linda had coffee.   The audience for the show of the Glockenspiel was only us and about a thousand other people!!!!  The Glockenspiel is located in a very large building and after the noon bells quit ringing, the music started playing and figures begin to move.  There were two sections of moving figures and it is the best Glockenspiel I have ever seen and I believe I have seen a total of four or so. 

While we were in the bank to exchange more dollars for Euros, I saw a man with a large gun on his hip standing mostly at the top of the stairs that lead down to the teller – he did not have a happy look on his face.  As another man came up the stairs, he nodded to the gun toter and off they went.  I guess he was a guard or something, but I found that interesting.

We walked to the bus stop where our Grey Line tour should be and waited a while for the bus.  We all got to sit on the top of the double-decker bus but luckily it was an enclosed area.  The woman guide spoke everything in German and English and it was a very good tour.  We took the Grand Circle tour and covered inside and around the city.  We saw palaces, the Olympic Park, BMW World, lots of statues and fountains, narrow streets that the bus was able to barely drive through and very, very busy city streets.  The people in this city seem to park everywhere and make mostly one lane streets and they walk across the streets pretty much where they want and when they want.  The bicyclists are also very prevalent everywhere, both on sidewalks and in bicycle lanes on all the streets.  We have seen several bike riders using their umbrellas.  We have seen women in dresses and heels riding along the streets.  We have seen several areas where hundreds of bikes were waiting for their owners to return and claim them.  The tour lasted two and a half hours and we all feel like we have a pretty good feeling for the city in general. 

Since it had been a long time since breakfast until the end of the tour, we decided to get a small late lunch, so we went to a place that appeared to be really old and really busy, perhaps mostly with locals.  (90% of Munich was destroyed in 1945 and has been rebuilt since then.  That’s why it is mostly modern.)  They were serving lots of people, but we had a good lunch of roasted potatoes, potato soup, pretzels, and apple strudel and dumpeldingers (or something) that is a yeast bread with vanilla sauce and is delicious.  There is a photo of it in picasa.  Afterwards, we went shopping but didn’t really splurge on anything.  Sue and I went back to the Apple Store and bought some small items (big price) and to a ritzy store to look around.

We got back to the hotel in time to rest a little while before leaving for a pizza place that someone recommended to us.  It was excellent.  We each had our own small pizza (see the photos for a picture of one of them).  The waiter was very gracious and funny.  After that, Sue and I went to the Hard Rock Café and bought a Munich shirt (can’t pass that up) and then we returned to the hotel.  Everyone has packed everything going to Salzburg on the train tomorrow in their small suitcase and everything else in the big suitcase.  The large ones have now been taken downstairs to the car and we are ready to get to the train in the morning, except for sleeping and having breakfast.  We have also already paid our hotel bills (it was pretty expensive but it was a very nice place with exceptional hosts) and paid for four nights of parking (the two nights we spent in Munich and the two we will spend in Salzburg) so most all of the loose ends are tied up.