Corey and I spent the first half of the day by ourselves. She went off to Dachau which was the first concentration camp and I decided to stay in the city and explore a bit. It was a great decision because Sunday was the highlight of my visit. We were up early and after breakfast I walked over to Marienplatz intending to stop in at church. I ended up not making it to church, but spent my morning pretty much just going wherever my feet took me. I ended up walking along Maximilianstrasse towards what Ozzy told us was the parliament building and once reaching it, decided to stroll along the river since it looked lovely. It was! There were lots of people jogging, riding bikes and just walking like me. I ended up at a little beach which was mostly made up of rocks (kind of like Nice!) and found a stump that was on fire. It was strange as well as the fact that a man joined me on the beach and lit a newspaper on fire. Apparently this was the fire beach. I kept w
alking back on the path and came to a tunnel. I was going to head back towards town on the bridge but decide to go thru the tunnel, just for kicks. It was AWESOME! The entire inner surface was completely covered with a mural. It was really detailed and I must have spent 20 minutes just walking back and forth admiring it.After I was finally done in there, I decided I needed lunch. I found some discount bakery place and got an enormous pretzel. I ate my pretzel in the sun and then went back to Marienplatz where I met up with a free bike tour group and proceeded to have the time of my life.
The bike tour was the absolute best thing I did the whole weekend. I didn't particularly care for the guide (he reminded me of a college guy who never grew up) but the bikes were so awesome and old school- they didn't have hand breaks; they were the back pedal ones like on our old Huffys! They were also silver and we called them California Cruisers. Our guide did a 10 minute history of Munich and then we got our bikes and started cruisin'! We rode by the Hofbräuhaus then over to Maximilianplatz (on the corner of the expensive street and the royal residence) and then to the English garden. It was so nice over there- flowers were blooming, the sun was out and the clothes were off-- of some people! Yes, we stopped by the nude part of the English Garden (which is an enormous park) but thankfully it was still early in the season so there were about 3 people with no clothes. We cycled by them and over to the Chinese Tower which is the second largest beer garden on earth! It can hold 9000 people! We had an hour to eat or do whatever and since I had already eaten, I just sat and chatted with my new friends. They served 5 types of beer and a bunch of different food- including giant pretzels (pretzels are really big in Bavaria/Munich (pun!) since they invented them). some action shots...
After the break, we hopped back on our bikes (which was pretty funny since I think I was the only one who didn't have a beer) and rode back thru the park. I pretty much stopped listening to our guide the rest of the ride since he was being crude and just enjoyed riding my bike and the beautiful weather. One cool thing we stopped and watched for a few minutes were the river surfers- there was a point in the river right past a bridge that had basically a continuous wave and these dudes in wets suits took turns surfing!
We cycled back to the starting point and I dropped my bike and jogged over to meet up with Corey since we got back almost an hour late (oops!). Since it was still early in the afternoon, we walked over to the city museum, but it closed about 10 minutes after we got there, so we just looked around the gift shop (which was awesome). We were close to the painted tunnel, so I took Corey over to see it (she wasn't as impressed as I was) and then we walked in a direction neither of us had been in yet. Eventually we decided it was dinner time and I had the BEST German dinner ever. I wanted to try something traditionally German so I ordered Leberkäse. It's like a mini meat loaf and it was excellent! It came with potato salad (which was cold!) and I got what I thought was the German version of Sprite, but turned out to be a million times better. It didn't look like much, but when we were done I was so full!
It was getting cold at that point so we went back to pick up our jackets at the hostel. Before we left, we decided to cash in our complimentary drink coupons at the hostel bar. I got a 'rattler' which is half beer, half "lemonade" (which = Sprite). It came in a little glass and reminded me of Anheuser-Busch. After that little experience, we snagged our jackets and headed out for a taste of the night life! Basically Munich was pretty quiet but we did find a lion dressed as a monk holding beer (what possibly says Munich more than that?!). We headed back and were the first ones in bed.
I have to say that this was the best day of my trip, probably since I got to do what I wanted and also the amazing bike tour. I want to ride a bike everywhere from now on!
