First day in Munich!

Monday 23rd September

It was another day of planes, trains and automobiles for Mark and myself. David left early to catch his train to Rome for his ling trip home. Mark and I had a flight at 1.10 pm to Munich.

We left the apartment at about 10 am and, after a car, plane and train trip, we ended up getting into our hotel in Munich at about 5 pm. It was a long day.

Our hotel, Fleming’s Hotel, is ideally situated being right near the train station where we arrived today and where we will depart from, in a few days time, to catch a train to Strasbourg.

What I didn’t realise though was how close to Oktoberfest we are. In fact, I didn’t even realise Oktoberfest would be running in September! Anyway, we quickly dropped our bags and headed out again. Our plan for the afternoon was to visit to one of the famous beer houses, Hofbrauhaus. and this was about a 30 minute walk away but even the light drizzle failed to distract from some spectacular sites along the way.

The Hofbrauhaus Beer house experience was quite something; it was a weird cross between an Andre Rieu concert, the likes of which I’ve only seen advertised on TV, The Sound of Music and a soccer world cup grand final. It was a packed and noisy venue, full of folk drinking from 1 liter steins and dining on the local fare with plenty of Schweinshaxen being devoured. We sat a a table and were rather cramped with four other diners but this only added to the overall experience and did little to stop Mark from finishing off 2 liters of beer.

We’d thought we’d find somewhere for dessert on the way home but that didn’t eventuate so we headed back to our hotel and collapsed into our beds after a rather long day.