Wednesday, August 27, 2014

A museum, a park, and a beer

Wow! What a great second day :) The first five hours of our day were spent in the Deutsches Museum and I am happy to report that we saw almost everything there was to see! There were eight floors, each with various levels within. Laura and I got quite turned around and were always surprised with how there always seemed to be more to see. From physics to pharmaceutics and astronomy to all about ships, we learned and saw a lot of really neat things. And we climbed all of the stairs! We only took the elevator at the end to go down. At the top we were rewarded with a gorgeous view of the city! As we were preparing to leave, we realized that we missed the basement that had an exhibit on mining. We went down into what looked like a mine and were quite impressed with the life of miners. It seemed that the mine kept growing as we couldn't find the way out. Finally, we returned to the stairs and left the museum to find that the rain from the morning had stopped and the weather was quite nice!

Our next destination was the English garden which was a 3 kilometer walk away. It is definitely autumn here, making the walk to the garden nice (in my mind, Laura finds it too cold) as it was a tad chilly but perfect with a sweater. Once at the park, we stopped at the Chinese tower to eat a Bavarian doughnut and take a rest as our legs were killing us. Afterward we went to explore the park and it was beautiful! We ended up being at the part of the park near Marienplatz so walked there instead of taking the metro. As we walked there we realized that we'd been near one of the streets when we were lost the first day. It was fun to now know where we were. We also found the US Consulate-it's near the English garden. 

It was then almost time for dinner so we walked around for a bit then grabbed a quick dinner before heading to the Hofbrauhaus which is Munich's largest and most famous drinking hall. It was full of people, fun, and live music! Laura and I sat at a table and ordered a half liter beer and pretzel to share. While neither of us are nuts about the taste of beer, we enjoyed the experience and had fun taking pictures with the beer and making funny faces after taking a sip. Then it was time to head home. Even after being here for a few days, we were able to get to the train and know the right direction and what stop to get off on without a map!