Sunny Munich!

What a difference a day and a few miles can make! Today we had a gorgeous day in Munich. We started with a giant breakfast at the hotel which ended up holding us over until right around dinner - our hotel's owner is quite generous with her spread. We headed out to the pedestrian zones, stopping at St. Michael's church and the Frauenkirche on the way to the Marienplatz. These two churches, along with St. Peter's a bit farther along, had been heavily damaged in WWII and had been completely reconstructed. St. Mike's was gorgeous, with a huge, barrel vault ceiling; the Frauenkirche was more sparse, with Gothic arches and spare furnishings. This is where Pope Benedict was archbishop before he was pope.

The street leading toward Marienplatz (which is the home of the old and new town halls) is filled with shopping and people strolling. The sun was dazzling and it was a lovely walk. We got to the square and looked around the neo-Gothic new town hall a bit, and decided to have a peek inside St. Peter's to kill the half-hour we had before the Glockenspiel was to play. However, they were having an 11 o'clock service, so we went back out to the square, found a place to park with a good view, and waited for the "performance." It was... okay. At least we got some sun.

Back into St. Peter's, which was pretty, and had some pretty creepy reliquaries, including one with an entire skeleton with eyes in the eye sockets. Brrr. Just got another chill. After this, we swung over to see what the Viktualienmarkt was all about, and it seemed pretty cool - lots of food stands and places to buy fresh meats and bread. We didn't need any food, however, so we headed out to the Residenz, where we toured the apartments and the treasury. This place wins the award for worst included audioguide EVER - it was so boring that we just gave up on it and used the plaques and some Rick Steves info to guide us.

We finally dragged ourselves out of there around 4:15 and decided it was finally time for early dinner, so we headed to the famous Hofbrauhaus. Of course it's touristy and all, but it wasn't crowded, the Radler was good, and the food was actually some of the best we've had on the trip thus far. Also, it was fairly cheap compared to a lot of the places we went, so score one for the Hof. :)

We decided to meander our way back to the hotel via the grocery store (in the basement of a department store, like Marks and Spencer in the UK) for some sweets and snacks for the train tomorrow, and have been taking it easy ever since. I can NOT get Blogger to upload any pictures for me, so I'm giving my old Photobucket account a try so I don't get behind in the posting. As soon as that is up and running, I'll post the link. Happy Monday to you all!