28 April, 2016

ŚWoke up at 4 and couldn't get back to sleep! Oh well, it will sort itself out in time! Had a great breakfast at the hotel...always good when you don't have to cook and clean up. We then went for a walk to again find this Bavarian restaurant Rob had been told about. We were smarter this time and checked Google maps first, realizing after looking at the map we had no hope yesterday of finding it. 45 min later....at least it wasn't snowing but still cool at -1, we found the restaurant but the menu didn't look that exciting. Headed back to the hotel to find Jan and Andy had just checked in!

Great to see them again and as usual, we picked up as if we had seen each other last week!

Headed into the city to do some sightseeing after a quick lunch for Jan and Andy and decided to take the Hop on Hop off bus to get an idea of the city. Sadly the commentary was in German over the loudspeaker which meant that it was almost impossible to hear the commentary in English using the earphones.  It did show us how huge Munich is!  Munich, home to 1.4 million people, is the capital of the German state of Bavaria.  Munich means "by the Monks place" as it was founded by the monks in 1158.

People everywhere travel by bicycles and the underground trains are fantastic. They also have above ground trams and buses.

Lots of the restaurants have an outdoor eating area for "people watching" and they have blankets on the chairs as it is so cold even though it is Spring!

Passed the "walking man" on the tour. Such an amazing statue!

The Schloss Nymphenburg was the Summer Palace for the royal rulers of Bavaria. The panorama photo does no justice to the size of the palace.. I actually needed a 360 view as this was only half of the palace! 

We stopped in one of the many beer gardens for an early dinner. Rob had a huge meal, pork knuckle, roast duck, sausage and pork roast. It was so delicious! Andy had pork roast while Jan and I had white asparagus and salmon. White asparagus is in season in Spring and is a very sweet asparagus. It is grown with dirt molded around it so that it does not receive any light therefore is deprived of chlorophyll . It is served every way you can think of...soup, steamed with hollandaise sauce, fried with breadcrumbs, ravioli etc. very expensive at about $18 a kilo.