Day Trip: Munich

Last Saturday we took a day trip to Munich. It was a little less then a 2 hours drive on the autobahn. It is funny, before coming to Germany I thought the autobahn was only one road and that it would be incredibly scary. This just goes to show how little most Americans now about Germany and Europe. I actually enjoy driving on the autobahn and no I don't drive over 100mph. Most drives go between 130-140 kmh (kilometers per hour). This is about 80-90 mph. I am used to getting to drive 75mph on the interstates in South Dakota so I quite enjoy it. Back to Munich. There is a lot to see in Munich so we knew this would only be our first trip.

After we found parking we decided to first hit up the famous Hofbrauhaus. It is a beer hall that has a live German band. I read about it while looking up things to do in Munich. I guess it was on a TV show so it is a big tourist spot and popular with Germans also.  I read it would get extremely crowded around noon so when we arrived in Munich about 11, we decided to go straight there. They were right about it getting crowded. The longer we were there the more people kept showing up. If you go I would definitely recommend going early or waiting until after the noon rush. Although, the band does not start until noon but we were still able to listen some.  The beer was good! I had a beer with lemonade and Colby enjoyed a Dunkle (dark) beer. The food was also very good. I had meatloaf and homemade potato salad. The potato salad was delicious!! The beer we got was served in liter mugs and boy that was a lot of beer! I saw some people with smaller glasses but the menu only indicated a liter. We had an enjoyable experience there and would go back again.

the Hofbrauhaus. It was getting very busy

enjoying my beer!

Lucky for us the Hard Rock Cafe was right across from the Hofbrauhaus so Colby was able to just run in quick and get his sticks. We were wanting to do the Sandeman's free walking tour at 1pm but after all that beer we needed to find a bathroom. It took a lot longer to find a bathroom then we thought so it was already past 1pm. The tour was still there but apparently they could only have so many people and we hadn't "bought" our tickets online. The website had said to just show up at the meeting place at the assigned time but that is obviously not the real case. If you want to make sure you get on the tour you have to get your tickets online and print the ticket. We weren't sure which time we would be able to do so we didn't want to commit. I hear the tours are great and in several cities but that just turned me off them. We just walked around. We saw the Glockenspeil. Which is basically a large cuckoo clock. 

Glockenspeil

We decided since it wasn't super nice and Colby wasn't feeling good to head to the Deutches (German) museum. We were only able to spend 2 hours there before closing. The place is huge and we probably didn't even see half of it.  The main things we saw were the boats/ships, the airplanes and flying transportation and the kids area. The kids area was nice with lots of hands on activities for the kids. You are able to go into some of the planes and it was semi interactive. The kids were in no way bored but they definitely didn't want to leave the kids area even though it was not very big. It is somewhere we would probably go back to. 

a ship in the museum

We enjoyed our day in Munich and were still home at a decent hour. The museums close early so we probably should of started there and moved to the walking around part afterwards. Next time I was to see Olympic Park and possibly the zoo. There is also the BMW museum there but the kids aren't huge museum fans were you just look. The are toddlers and need the interactive stuff. I am also looking forward to doing Oktoberfest once. I already know we won't be doing it this year as we will be in the States for my brothers wedding the whole time it is running, basically. Still another city checked off our list!