Day 10: Munich

Due to the absurdly early hour at which we were up this morning, I am writing retrospectively from the airport as we wait to board our flight to Barcelona.

Yesterday was a busy day and our last day in Munich. We rode out to Nymphenburg Palace in the morning and took a audio tour of the main rooms, which were amazingly beautiful. I actually preferred the decoration of Nymphenburg to Versailles, finding it more elegant and tasteful.

 

 

After exploring the palace itself, we took a walk through the gardens, which are now a public park. It was an interesting mix of old statues and Baroque gardens and joggers and families with strollers.

 

We then caught the return bus back to downtown Munich, where we revisited the Marienplatz to see the Glockenspiel, which plays on the clocktower of the Neues Rathaus (that elaborately constructed city hall building I posted about a few day ago) at 5 pm.

When the Glockenspiel performance(?) was over, we walked over to the Viktualienmarkt, an extensive daily market where farmers, sandwich and wurst stands,  florists, butchers, and artisans offer their goods to locals and tourists alike. We sampled wurst and bought some Bavarian mountain flower honey, perused flowers and a terrifying display of monstrous crustaceans and octopi.

It really was magnificent, but seeing all that beautiful food, we'd worked up quite an appetite. The market was starting to close  down, so we went back to Marienplatz and got dinner at a nearby restaurant owned by Augustiner brewery. The whole place was boisterous and friendly and full of good food and drink, so it was a perfect way to finish up our trip to Munich.

We grabbed a couple of beers from a café on the way home and hung out in the courtyard for a while before turning in early, ready for the final leg of our trip: Barcelona.