Munich Recap (photos later)

We left Monday morning to catch the 07:49 train from Freiburg. With our change in Mannheim and the routine delays of Deutsche Bahn, we pulled into Munich five hours later.

Sadly, it wasn’t the kids’ greatest travel performance.  Errol “joked” about scrapping the whole week and boarding the next train back to Freiburg.

Practice doesn’t always make perfect, but, we made it.

Usually the size of our crew requires us to rent apartments on our trips, but I had found a Munich hotel that offered six beds in one room. Kids stay free! Breakfast!

Upon check-in, we learned the luggage storage amenity didn’t mean free luggage storage. We headed down to the basement to rent a locker.

These kind of hospitality fees don’t go over well with Errol. His usual hotels--without his family--are not the type that would charge for a couple hours of luggage storage. The stark contrast of travel with wife and children and without is always there.

A backpack was lost, recovered, and picnic made near the empty fountain of Neptunesbrunnen.

I don’t know anything about art and am easily swayed on what is worth seeing. I saw a poster about a Paul Klee exhibit and announced I wanted to go.

Paul Klee was a subject in my German night class over the winter. I had struggled reading his short biography. Seeing his work would be much more fun.

Errol wanted to go to the Old Masters’ Museum. We’d split--I’d take a couple kids; he’d take a couple kids.

When the twins learned their next stop was an art museum, you would have thought they were being sent to dig ditches. Their reaction made Errol reconsider how much he wanted to see the Old Masters’ Museum again. He decided to stay outside with Lee and Ned while the bigs and I explored the Pinakothek der Moderne and Paul Klee.

Spirits were lifted and thirsts quenched when we reunited with the Valvanises. We crossed the street from the hotel and ate supper at the beer hall, Augustiner-Bräu.

Our second day in Munich was lovely. Lauren and I took the twins, Vinnie, and Alex to the Deutches Museum. All four enjoyed the hands-on exhibits within the KinderReich--especially the marble runs. Errol, Nick, Charolotte, and Thom visited the Residenz to admire its treasures.

We met up at Hofbräuhaus for even bigger pretzels and mugs of beer than the night before.  In theory, we walked all of it off in the huge Englischer Garten. Though, the surfers in the river did seem to be working a bit harder.

We ended our afternoon in the Englischer Garten at the Chinesischer Turm Biergarten. Some of the  group seemed to have Munich consumption goals, and I think they were met.

This morning we spent our final hours in the city around Marienplatz. We saw the Glockenspiel dance and sing and visited Munich’s dom. We spent some time at another playground before heading back to the train station.

We were off to Trento, Italy, and the Valvanises were headed back to Frankfurt to catch their plane back to America tomorrow.

It was so fun to have our dear friends come all the way to Europe to experience Germany with us.