Munich Tour

August 22nd we were lucky enough to have a tour guide! On of Chris' fencing fellows met us and guided us around for a couple of hours. This was awesome as we got a good lay of the land and made it into places we might not have otherwise found. We started with St. Michaels (hopefully correct name...).

This was quiet eye catching. Really like the way it escapes it's borders.

The local mall has made considerable efforts to keep the passageways feeling fresh and airy. Beats the hell out of any passageway at Metrotown!

The next square we emerged into had many things whose names are uncertain. The yellow building is probably the Royal Residence.

Churches are always impressive.

The shattered and mostly repaired statue was particularly striking.

Sometimes it's easier to just paint pillars and such than to build them; this isn't infinite-budget Vienna after all. The result is actually pretty cool!

Apparently Bowflex has had competition as a do-all home gym for some time. A new build of an old design.

This is not a good place to walk through hungry.

Luckily our next stop was the Hofbräuhaus. Pretzel with your cliche?

Lunch was good, and as is traditional accompanied by a litre of very good dark beer.

Inside the band had begun to play.

In Marienplatz nearby stalls with food and drinks of all hearty kinds are ringed by cafes. Luckily our guide knew the secrets and guided us to marzipan goodness.

At this point, after an espresso and some clarification of where on the map we might be, our guide abandoned us. We visited another church but we aren't strictly certain which one. Cool stairs tho.

And wall-mounted headstones.

And of course the obligatory stern man with moustache.

We decided to see some of the Isar river and the Englischer Garten. Sadly some signs were confusing so we took an indirect route.

Eventually, after a detour of maybe even five minutes The Wrong Way (tm), we found the river.

Some stretches were full of sun bathers.

In the parkland near the river there are proto-Ents. That is one leathery dude!

And old beamers.

Across the water was St. Lukas modest facility.

And a little further up some sort of imposing building.

At some points the river has narrow branches, creating surprise surfing areas. Well, at least one.

Inside a Diana temple south of the gardens we heard some rather decent street music.

After that we found the Augustiner brewhouse. Their beer apparently has VERY old recipes. It sort of shows; the beer is very good but lacks the complexity of flavor of more modern beers. Not to say it's bad by any stretch; it is quite good in fact.

Having visited Hofbräuhaus and Augustiner with good results we decided to go in search of further super fresh local beer. Our plan was to reserve tickets for the next days travel to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg - utterly impossible, courtesy of the byzantine half-functional logic of the reservation kiosk - and then find more beer.

After the ticket failure, we headed for Löwenbräu.

Löwenbräu dark is very good. Their pilsner is also decent.

A few beers and a nice chat with a well-travelled English family later we contemplated heading for Paulaner but ultimately decided that our 2.83L consumption for the day was sufficient and called it a day. Rough going but we survived our first German city!