August 22, 2015

OK, I’m really falling behind on my postings!  We have been running so fast from city to city that before I know it, I’m already an entire country behind!  I will get caught up by tomorrow!!  🙂

We spent 3 days in Munich this week.  The weather was projected to be rainy, so we stayed at “The Tent” which was a giant tent where you could find a spot on the floor to sleep.  We were SO GLAD that we did this!  It absolutely poured rain the first night and although I have great confidence in our tent, I don’t know if even it would have held up!  We liked having a warm/dry place to sleep where we didn’t have to worry about our stuff.

We downloaded a Rick Steves audio tour for the town of Munich and used that to see the old town area.  It was very informative and if it hadn’t been for the continued rain, we would have really enjoyed the tour!  The city is beautiful and many of the buildings are very impressive.  The town hall is huge and beautiful and there were several really neat churches.  (We only went into one because Hayden’s a little “churched out”!)

When it got too wet for us to be walking around, we popped into the Hofbrauhaus for dinner and a (very big) beer.  It was a fun place to hang out and we ended up at a table with a couple who were from Marco Island, Florida and were doing a house exchange there in Munich.  Adam enjoyed his beer while Hayden had an Apfel Schorle that looked just like a beer.  They had fun toasting and drinking.

The next day was MUCH nicer and we took the train and a bus out to Neuschwanstein Castle.  This is the castle that inspired the Sleeping Beauty castle for Disney and is the model for the castle in Disney World.  Unfortunately, the tours were booked up for the next 8 hours, so we decided to just kike to the top and look around the outside without going in.  We didn’t really feel like we missed much because the entire tour was only 30 minutes anyway.  It was as cool looking as I remember from when I was here almost 15 years ago.

We lucked out because Saturday was the 90 year anniversary of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, (Science and Technology) so we got free entry to the museum and to see the planetarium show!  We were pretty excited because Hayden really wanted to go to the museum and we are always happy to save money!  lol  The museum ended up being a great way to spend half a day.  They had lots of exhibits on space, atoms, and the creation of the Universe.  Hayden was totally into it and has decided that he wants an electron microscope for Christmas.  🙂  They even had a playroom for kids with Giant Legos, so he was in heaven.

From Munich, our next stop is Salzburg, Austria then back to Italy for the World’s Fair in Milan.