Getting By, Dreaming Big

The Fountain at Karlplatz (first pic of the vacation!)

OK, so here I am now at a new URL – http://gettingbydreamingbig.wordpress.com!  Save it in your favorites.  I was encountering serious problems at blogger and just couldn’t take it any longer.  It’s incredibly frustrating when you spend 30 minutes writing a post, downloading pictures and then as I go to type the next sentence it’s deleted.  So I’m going to give this a go and if it works better I’ll make it my permanent home!  Thank you for bearing with me.

Alright, to vacation!  Jon and I took off at 8:10PM from Newark on Wednesday, August 19th (it seems like a lifetime ago!)  We flew Luftansa and I have to say I was mighty impressed with airline.  We each had our own television at our seat with a variety of movie & tv show options.  I was also impressed with their meals.  I never expect anything from airline food and I was pleasantly surprised.  On the way to Germany I watched Duplicity (review coming later) and 17 Again (the more I watch that movie the more I like it). 

We landed in Munich at like 10:30AM Munich time and hopped the train for the hour ride to Central Station, which was near where our hostel was located.  Once we got off the train and got acclimated a bit with the neighborhood we found our hostel, 4 You Munich.  Check in wasn’t until 3PM so we dropped our luggage in the luggage room and headed out to explore.

First stop, LUNCH!  We were famished.  We walked to towards the Marienplatz (the main plaza in Munich).  They have a ton of great Pedestrian walkways in this area and we found a good place for lunch – Augustiner.  I had read about their beer online and so I thought it would be yummy.  We each got a .50L beer and some pretzels to share (the pretzels in Munich are the best – big like NY pretzels but crispier like pretzels in a bag).  I got the Beef Goulash and Jon had the weiner sausages with potato salad.  It wasn’t the best meal we had during our trip, but it might have been the best pretzels we had all trip.

View of Munich from the tower of the Frauenkirche

After lunch we headed over to the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady).  This is Munich’s Cathedral  or Dom.  It was built from 1468-1488 but the towers were added in 1524.  We explored the inside of this beautiful church and of course climbed the stairs to the top of the tower!  The view of Munich was all encompassing.

Afterwards we headed back to our hostel for a quick 1 hour nap and showers – much needed.  Slightly more rested we ventured out again.  Next stop was Michaelskirche (St. Michael’s Church).  Unfortunately this church was under renovation so we did not really get to enjoy the beauty of the outside but the inside was gorgeous and so peaceful.  The barrel vaulting in Michaelskirche is second in size only to that of St. Peter’s in Rome.  It was pretty impressive.

We then walked to the Deutsche Museum, which was closed – boo!  I had read that on Thursday’s it was open later but this turned out not to be true.  It was still a nice walk through downtown Munich.  So we decided to visit, yes, another church!  What can we say….  So on to Theatinerkirche (Theatine Church) it was.  This is in what is considered the “Royal” section of  Munich.  This church had a very Italian feel to it, as it should, since an Italian princess commissioned it!  We were rushed out because the guy wanted to close but we got the drift of the church and if nothing else it was a good place to sit for 15 minutes.

Hofbrauhaus Logo

Since nothing else was open at this point, but we weren’t quite ready for dinner…it was time to visit the Hofbrauhaus!!!   This is Munich’s most famous brewery and was founded in 1589 by Duke Wilhelm V.  As historic as it may be you go here for beer…lets be real!

Me with our first two Humpens (or litres) of beer!

We each got a Humpen (or litre) of what else Hofbrau Beer.  We split a pretzel and just sat and chatted and took in the music from the brass oompah band for awhile.  It was a fun thing to do and also relaxing given how tired we were.  After Hofbrauhaus it was time for dinner.  We wandered across the street and snagged an outdoor table.  I ordered a salad with turkey (you can get turkey a lot in Germany but not chicken so much…) and Jon got a pork knuckle with potato dumplings (it was ginormous!!!)

Then we called it a night so we could rest up for a full day on Day 2 in Munich!!!