Munich

Liz & I in the gardens at the Nymphenburg Palace

We had this past Thursday & Friday off from work so Liz & I decided to brave the trains and head to Munich for two days. We woke up Thursday morning & headed downstairs to grab some breakfast for our trip. When we got to the kitchen we were thrilled to find that Herr Martin (the South African chef) was in the kitchen. He helped us pack a large breakfast and also gave us snacks for later so we head out on our walk to the train station very happy. 

As we were walking away from the hotel we heard a car behind us and it was Katrin driving her daughter to school. She offered us a ride to the train station & we happily took her up on the offer. Once we got to the station she took us to the ticket machine and helped us buy our tickets. We had looked everything up online the night before & thought we knew what we were doing but Katrin surprised us by telling us about a special ticket that would take us to Munich & also let us use all of the buses, trains and trams in Munich. We only needed one ticket for the two of us and it ended up being less for that ticket than what one individual ticket would have been!!

When we got to Munich we checked into our hostel, grabbed a city map and headed out to find the Hofbrauhaus for lunch. I'd gone to the one in Pittsburgh this past winter but I was really excited to go to the original one! After two train stops and a bit of wandering we finally found it! 

 By the time we got there we were so hungry that we didn't get picture of our food, but it was absolutely delicious! After lunch we did have any plans so we just wandered around the city for a few hours. 

 We visited the clock tower at the center of Munich 

After that we headed over to St. Peter's church which was absolutely beautiful!

When we were done exploring the city center we hopped on the train and then a tram and headed over to Nymphenburg Palace. The palace was about to close so we didn't go inside but we did spend almost two hours walking through it's grounds. 

 Liz found some swans out front and pretended that she was the Swan Princess! 

 The palace, which Liz & I have decided to live in!

 In the back they have a really expansive botanical garden including a dozen or 

so green housed with plants from all over the world!

 I really liked the pink bonsai tree but they were all really pretty!

 After exploring the palace we took the tram & train back to the city center to grab a late

 dinner where Liz finally got the plain cheeseburger she'd been wanting since we got here. 

Our room in the hostel

After dinner we headed back to the hostel to get our room. We founded out that we had been overbooked so we were upgraded to a four person room which was a nice surprise! Even though it was only about 9:30 pm by the time we got back we were so exhausted that we went straight to bed and slept for about 11 hours.

The next morning we got up, grabbed breakfast and the hostel and then headed out to take a tour of Dachau which took up most of our second day but was totally worth it. After the tour we headed back to the main train station to grab our train home. 

We ended up having to transfer train in Kempten again which is where we got lost the last time and ended up in Lindau instead of Oberstdorf. We double checked which platform we need to be on to make sure that we didn't get lost again. When we got to our platform we saw this....

According to the sign on the platform the trains to both Lindau & Oberstdorf were leaving at the exact same time form the exact same platform. I quickly went back on my camera and watched the video from the last time Liz & I were in Kempten and sure enough there was the exact same sign on the platform that day. 

Realizing this made us both feel much better about our train navigation skills and we were then confident that we would get on the right train when it came. Once the train came and we realized how it worked I was throughly annoyed. Only one train comes to Kempten but halfway through it's trip to Lindau/ Oberstdorf it literally breaks in half with half going one way and half going the other way. On the way home from Kempten the first time Liz & I had literally done everything right except that we got on the wrong half of the right train...

We made sure to get on the right half this time and made it home without any problems! Our next two days off aren't in a row so we're probably going to stay close to the hotel and just do some short day trips. While talking to Herr Martin this morning he told us about a path that we can take to hike through the Alps over to Austria! If the weather is nice we're probably going to go on Thursday. No matter what we do everything here is so nice I'm sure we'll have fun!