You’ll have to forgive me. I kind of gave up on that whole New Years resolution thing while I was on vacation. I am writing this blog on the Santa Barbara airbus on my way up to UCSB to spend this week. I am going to try (much like Spain) to go by and relive the trip in chronological order.
I arrived in Munich from Paris after spending the previous night out with my friends. I wasn’t going to see most of these people again since I wasn’t going to be in Paris again until February (minus the one night between Munich and the US). So I didn’t get much sleep and I had an 11:00AM flight out of CDG. Don’t worry, I made it and was fully packed and everything!
When I got to the Munich airport, I tried to call Dad, but my phone refused to make calls. I was just going to hop into a Taxi and make my way to the hotel, after a quick stop to the ATM. It is a good thing that I went ot the ATM though because the cab ride was over sixty-five Euros.
My cab driver was really nice though. She was from Budapest (the last city on our trip) so I asked her all these questions about the foods I should eat, the places I should go and not only in Budapest but Munich as well. She was really nice and told me a lot about what I needed to do.
I got to the hotel and met up with Dad. Naturally, he had just woken up. He flew into Munich that morning so he wasn’t quite adjusted. Our hotel was right across the street from the main train station. I, having gone out with my friends the night before, and Dad with his jetlag, were not really up for anything super touristy (a tour or anything like that) on that day, so instead we kind of wandered around the city on our own. Dad kept commenting on how pristine the city was. I didn’t notice until he said something, but there wasn’t a single building that had paint peeling or looked dilapidated. It was actually really impressive.
After walking around, we decided to eat. I hadn’t had much food (aside from the surprisingly good blueberry muffin I bought at CDG before my flight) that day so we wanted to find some traditional Bavarian food. And find it we did! I had my very first taste of schnitzel. Oh my goodness. I actually don’t think I had ever had schnitzel before. The way it was served was a small cutlet of meat that had been breaded and fried. It came with a side of potatoes and a lemon wedge. I squeezed the lemon over the cutlet and dug in. Needless to say I had schnitzel in almost every town I went to.
After that lunch, we went back to our hotel where we both napped. I read on my kindle and dad snored. Nothing too unusual. That night, we went out again in search of more Bavarian food. We found another restaurant close to the train station, but in the opposite direction of where we went earlier. That night, I had bretzel. Contrary to the NY Street Vendors, bretzels in Bavaria are hard. I mean they are the same size as those soft pretzels they sell in NYC, but they are almost stale. Don’t get me wrong. They were still slated and delicious, but I was taken a back a little bit.
After dinner, we decided to get an early night. I came back and played Angry Birds on Dad’s iPad while he talked to JoAnn. Then he wanted his iPad back, so I read more on my kindle. I had just gotten it set up (Dad brought it with him from Houston for me) and I was downloading all these free books. I decided I wanted to read Dracula. It was a good choice. A lot of the story took place in the part of Europe we were about to go to! The bad news was I had night mares for the next week about chasing vampires.
One note about the hotels in central Europe. They are strange in their bed arrangements. We had two twin mattresses, but they were pushed together to form a double. And instead of sheets, they just have a down comforter wrapped up and sitting on a bed, kind of resembling a white crêpe suzette. And that was the style at every one of the hotels we stayed at.
The next morning, we got up and decided to take the bus tours of Munich. We found the tour bus start location (right next to the train station) and hopped on the bus that was going to do the full tour of Munich. This bus actually took us on two different routes. The first one was just around the central city. It was pretty neat. We saw a lot of the main tourist sites and got their explanations. Then it took us a little bit further out. We went to the Olympic park, where they explained that all of the little hills there were actually recycled dirt from the excavation of their subway system. I convinced Dad (after we got a nice hardy lunch of, what else, schnitzel) to go up to the top of the look out tower. It had a phenomenal 360˚ view of Munich. We saw the BMW head quarters and their plant, we saw the old part of the city. We saw it all.
After our bus tour, went back to our hotel and laid low for a little while. That night we wanted to go out and find this beer hall they talked about on our tour. We tried to find it the night before, but our hotel didn’t give us that great of directions (more like we couldn’t find it, but I’m going to go ahead and blame the hotel). But I’m really glad that we did find it. It was SO cool. It was this massive hall with bench lined tables all around. And when I say massive, I mean massive. There had to be at least a thousand people in this restaurant. Dad decided he wanted to try a different local beer at every place we went so he ordered one. He said the best one he had though was from the restaurant we went the night before. I think I got something other than schnitzel that time, but seeing as how it wasn’t as good I don’t remember what I had.
Once we finished our meal, we headed back to the hotel. We were off to Salzburg the next morning!
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