Munich

Day 9 - Saturday, September 24, 2005 Cont'd...

And here we are inside the church you saw on the previous page. Not quite as impressive as that other one though.

As we wandered about Munich, we noticed that there were lions scattered about all over the place, kind of like when Toronto had painted moose everywhere. In Toronto, if I recall how it worked, companies would buy a moose, paint it, display it, and then sell it, all proceeds going to charity. Looks like Munich was doing the same thing, and even in Vienna, we could some Lipizan horses all painted up, probably the same idea. Here is a sample one, though there were all kinds, from blue ones with celestial scenes painted on it, to one painted to look like waitress in Hooters. Course it was a male lion...so it was a cross-dressing Hooters waitress to boot! This one was covered in clocks and numerals.

This building is a gateway into the square to the far right of the clock tower. Looking at the guide book I see that this is the old Town Hall, something we didn't know at the time. If you look closely in the archway you can see something hanging from the ceiling.

Getting closer, this is what it turned out to be. It moved, it made noise, it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen.

And one final view of the Rathaus complex, taken from under the old town hall gateway, with the Frauenkirche towers seen behind it. On the left, you can see the flag of Bavaria. It is blue and white, not white and blue. You have to be careful to get that right (and this being almost a year later, I'm hoping I'm still getting it right...)

Now, it was time to make our way back to the hotel, completely forgetting at this point to return to the Opera House square. We leave the old city behind and enter the city itself. It was a fairly long walk back but there were some interesting sights along the way, such as these two mannequins in the windows above us.

We also had to cross a bridge to get to the hotel, and it had a nice view. No, Noel didn't go skinny-dipping in this one.

Here is a random building we passed along the way. I put it here simply because it is so different from any of the buildings I have at home, and yet is so common in Austria and Germany.

At this point, I knew I had a fair number of pictures left on my camera that I could take, so I started taking just about everything we came across. From statues at the ends of the bridge to cafes we passed. This was an odd building with a funny looking tower that looked like a kind of light house. Turned out this wasn't a random building at all but was the Müllersches Volksbad, a public swimming pool built in 1901. Something we found out later looking in a guide book.

And we're still walking. When I looked at the map in the guide book, I realized how far the river was from the old town, and we walked a great distance after we crossed the bridge. This is what we remember being identified as a music hall. In don't remember who told us that, and we could be completely wrong. The guide book shows the inside of a music hall, but not the outside. At this point we had no tour guide, we were on our own.

We stop at a little cafe along the way to have some cakes and coffee, and finally complete the last leg of our trek back to the hotel. Not quite that marathon we walked in Vienna, but it was a fair hike uphill. We probably would have stayed longer in the old city if we didn't have to get ready for our last dinner at...well, no one remembers the name of the place anymore. It was a nice little place though.

We had soup, but this time it had little noodles instead of pancakes in it. The main course was what I call Oma-style hamburgers. My grandmother is from Latvia, and her hamburgers are slightly breaded on the outside, with onions on the insided and seasoned. These were very similar, with mashed potatoes on the side.

After dinner, some of us went to stand outside next to a large stream or small river, depending on how you looked at it. The current was quite strong and the water flowed over a few ridges creating small waterfalls. In the river were some kayakers, either athletes in training or just amateurs having fun. We watched them try to work their way up and over the little water falls, flip upside down, and get stuck on the banks of the river. There was also a small lake nearby but we didn't go over to it since the bus was leaving soon. We stayed on the little bridge over the stream while the evening grew dark.

On the way back, Noel put on the Goodnight song from the Sound of Music, for this was the end of the tour...well, almost. We still had to get home the next day, another early morning was in store for us.