After a 14-hour flight, we reached Europe. (We couldn’t fly East to go home because we needed to cross the Atlantic to qualify for our Round-the-World airfare. We had to fly West.)
Munich is famous for Oktoberfest. Since we were traveling in May, there were no signs of the millions of visitors who would start arriving in September.
Munich is also famous for Rathaus-Glockenspiel, the mechanical clock located at Marienplatz, the central square in Munich.
The Glockenspiel enacts two distinct historical events from Munich’s past:
- The upper level of the clock depicts the 1568 wedding celebration of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria and Renata of Lorraine, highlighted by a jousting tournament where the Bavarian knight always wins against his Lorraine rival.
- The lower level stages the Schäfflertanz (Coopers’ Dance), which recalls the tradition of barrel makers dancing through the streets after a severe plague in 1517, meant to lift spirits and encourage residents to return to normal life.
We had lunch at the square and enjoyed both the 11 am and the noon performances. A few minutes before each performance all of the tourists got their cameras ready.
We also visited a nearby open market and a museum.
Close to our hotel, we toured St Paul, a Gothic revival Catholic church. Even though it is a small local church, the interior was astounding.
What we couldn’t find was a restaurant serving German food. Our hotel was located in a neighborhood with a significant Muslim population. All of the restaurants and grocery stores offered halal foods.
On this trip, we’ve enjoyed a fantastic variety of cuisines, including Indian, Korean, Thai, Italian, Vietnamese, Mediterranean, Malaysian, Japanese, Polynesian, Mexican, and Chinese. What we hadn’t found was authentic German.
We finally found an authentic German restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel. We had dinner there several evenings. Alice enjoyed her first taste of schnitzel.
Alice was still having trouble with her knee. My ankle was still sore from getting out of the boat in Thailand. Neither of us was particularly mobile. Alice decided to stay at our hotel. Rather than walk, I bought an all-day metro pass and spent the day exploring Munich by bus, tram, and subway. I would ride a tram to the end of the line, then find another one. It was an interesting way to see the city.
On our final day in Munich, we were both exhausted. We spent the entire day in and near our hotel, relaxing and repacking.
The next day, our driver picked us up at our hotel for our 9-hour flight to Boston.