May 30th, 2011 - Munich

We walked from the train station to our hotel since it was only about 5 blocks.  During our walk to the hotel, we noticed several casinos and strip clubs, so we were both a little nervous about the location of our hotel, but neither of us said anything.  It turned out that our hotel was very close to all the central spots and in a very nice part of town.  Despite arriving to check-in at 8:00 am, luckily they already had our room ready.  We got to our room to find it was huge!  Actually, it was probably just an average size hotel room in the US, but compared to the previous European hotels, it was enormous. 

We hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so we went to the hotel's complimentary breakfast - it was wonderful - fruit, rolls, jams, juices all on a buffet, in addition to being able to order fried eggs, bacon and omelets from the waitress.

After breakfast, we headed to Marian Platz, which was just about 5 blocks away and is the center of town.  On the way, we passed many trendy stores that weren't quite open yet - they opened at 10 am - an hour later.  We came across a store called Konen - which was very close to Laura's dad's company, Kone.  The letters on their sign went down the side of the building, so Laura held her hand up to block the last "n", so it looked to read "Kone".  Only later did we realize how bad it probably looked, with Laura's arm stretched out like that!  We also heard later that it's actually illegal to do the "Heil Hitler" sign - glad we didn't get in trouble - that would've been hard to explain what we were doing!

We arrived at Marian Platz, which is a big open plaza, in front of a large building with a huge clock tower.  Laura started to pose for a picture when a guy standing nearby offered to take both our pictures instead.  He was from DC, but had lived in Munich for 3 years.  He asked our plan for Munich and suggested some new sites in addition.  He also mentioned that he is a tour guide on a bike tour that started in 2 hours at 11:30 am.  He gave us a couple of coupons for 10 euros off, so it was only 14 euros each.  We were hesitant to do it though, because it was 4 hours long and we only had 2 days.  This would eat up most of our day.  We were also planning on going to a beer garden later that afternoon, which would have to be delayed due to the bike tour.  We talked about it and finally decided to give it a shot - Tony, our tour guide, seemed very fun, knowledgeable, energetic and we were having trouble figuring out what everything was.  We had a blast on it!  After about 2 hours of biking and seeing the city, we biked through a park and into a hidden beer garden!  We stopped for an hour to drink and eat - it was awesome!  They served huge pretzels, sauerkraut, and bratworst in addition to all the great beer!  Tony, our tour guide, got one of the huge pretzels and a brat.  He cut a slit in the pretzel and stuck his brat in it to make a bun - he said they don't offer buns here and he missed them!  Laura got a Radler beer, that was a mix of lemonade and wheat beer - she really liked it, and I got a dunken (dark) beer.  We met a couple on the tour who had just gotten engaged from Miami who we compared trips with and talked about frustrating language barriers we had run into.

After the beer garden, we hopped back onto our bikes for more touring!  We rode through more of the park and entered a large opening that was a nudist "beach", but no sand.  It was completely packed with people sitting on beach towels in the grass and some people wading in the small stream too.  The vast majority were wearing swimsuits, but we did see a few who were bearing it all!  Then we rode to another part of the stream that for some reason, had some white water that people were surfing on - very odd and cool!  We started talking to a family from Pittsburgh.  Mom, Dad and 4 daughters from 16-24 yrs old.  They were very experienced travelers, so it was good to get some travel tips from them.

After the bike tour we headed home for a quick shower and then on to a different beer garden!  We both got beers - Laura got the same mixture as this afternoon.  I got another dark beer - Dunken.  We split a giant pretzel and 2 large bratworsts with a pile of saurkraut.  A couple of locals standing by the table next to us inquired about our trip and if we were enjoying Germany so far.  Despite being a Monday, both beer gardens so far were packed!

After that, we walked around the town a little and got a little lost.  We came across an old statue of some german that had become a makeshift shrine to Michael Jackson.  We found it very funny, so we took a pic by it.  It had hundreds of pictures of MJ taped to it, with flowers, etc.  We grabbed a bottle of wine and then headed back to the hotel for and early night.