Since the numbered list format worked so well yesterday, I think I'll go back to it today.
1. Yesterday, after I made my previous post and we had each taken showers, we debated whether or not to hit the town or go to sleep (we were dead tired). We ended up making the correct decision to get our first beer in Munich. After doing so, we felt pretty outstanding and walked around the city for a couple of hours. We found some cool parks, a lot of old buildings and statues, and walked through the setting up of the main Oktoberfest grounds. On top of one of the Oktoberfest buildings there was a giant lion drinking a beer. Also, I had Chris take my picture in front of a giant concrete snail that marked the entrance to a park.
2. We slept for about 12 hours last night and woke up just in time for the hotel-provided breakfast. It was pretty incredible and included around 10 different types of meat. I'm usually a pretty light meat eater, so with that, and the sausages I had for lunch and dinner, I'm pretty sure I've had more meat today than I have in an average week back home.
3. Our plan today was to head downtown, check out the Glockenspiel, go to the toy museum, and generally wander around. When we got to the Glockenspiel (after a couple of detours), this guy came up to us with coupons for a bike tour. So we ended up doing that, which took most of the afternoon. It was really fun. We ate lunch at the second largest beer garden in Europe, rode through the largest city park in Europe (four times the size of Central Park), saw a bunch of naked guys at said park, watched some people surf on the river, accidentally wore our hats inside the most incredible cathedral I've ever seen (garnering some dirty looks until a guy pointed at his head, clueing us in on our faux pas), and generally learned a lot about the city.
4. On the bike tour we rubbed three out of four lions' heads on this wall, which supposedly gives you good luck (rubbing all four means you're greedy). When we finished the bike tour we had some time to kill and decided we should find this toy store I read about on BoardGameGeek. We figured that it probably wasn't in the guidebook, but we checked anyway. It turned out to be one of only four stores in the "miscellaneous" (i.e. not food or lodging) section--pretty lucky. Then it turned out to be only two blocks away from us--wow! So, as we were walking, Chris said we should buy some lottery tickets. Bam! Right there in front of us was a lottery ticket store. But it was closed. We figure it was the Fates' way of saying, yeah, you're pretty lucky right now, but not that lucky, so we'll save you some cash.
5. The toy store, Obletter, was amazing. I bought Risiko Express and am going to head back to get Einfach Genial (a.k.a. Ingenious) which was only €4.99. I took about 500 pictures of the game section. Agricola and Monopoly were sitting right next to each other on one stand. Germany is an amazing place. Also, I took a picture of Chris checking out Busen Memo.
6. We finished the day at Hofbrauhaus, which claims to be the most famous bar in the world (other Muncheners and tourists corroborated their story). It was cool, but just a little disappointing. We weren't served by a buxom Bavarian beer maiden, as we had hoped, and we're pretty sure the guy who did wait us thought we were going to walk out on our bill. He was watching us the whole time and when he brought our bill, stood and waited for us to fish out our money (even though we each still had food and beer remaining). Upstairs there is a buffet, which we didn't realize until afterward. For those arriving later, I suggest you give that a try.
7. We never ended up going to the toy museum. When we stopped to figure out where it was, it turned out we were standing, literally, directly underneath it. But the main exhibit was "100 years of teddy bears", which sounded distinctly unlike something we wanted to see, so we walked around instead.
8. Overall, it was a very successful day. We saw a ton of Munich, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of sausage and saurkraut, priced out dirndls (€40 - €250), and generally had a pretty outstanding time.
Update: Chris's corresponding post with pictures!
3 comments:
Pictures were the only way I could compete with words and links... I like commenting even though we are in the same room... Also Busen Memo is awesome!
so dirndls are traditionally dressed prostitutes?
Ha! I'm not sure if that was a hilarious joke or a legitimate question asked in a hilarious way. Just in case it's the latter: a dirndl is the thing she's wearing, i.e. a traditional Alpine dress. This would perhaps have been a more informative, but less interesting, link.
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