Intermission

I fly to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida tomorrow to join a cruise ship- Celebrity Silhouette, so I will be "off the air" again for some time.

My last cruise review on Cruisecritic.com   http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=47937585#post47937585  took 6 weeks to write and post.

The Silhouette one shouldn't take so long so I hope to return to the blog in late February (if not before)

Hope to see you then!!

Norris

Looking down on Munich

There's a remarkable church near Marienplatz called the Frauenkirche which has two red brick towers and one of these has an elevator which affords a birds-eye view of Munich. We had to go up there!

View from the top

The ferris wheel on the far right is part of Oktoberfest which is held in the same green park each year

You can see a rollercoaster to the right of the ferris wheel in this next photo

There are many pedestrian-only streets in the heart of Munich

The Bavarian State Opera house is at the center -the building with the concrete columns

As you can see the city isn't laid out in a grid pattern like American cities.  Satellite Navigation really helps when trying to drive through Munich as it's hard to know where you might be on a compass.

Here is the Marienplatz clock tower and the square

The tall tower at center is in the Olympic Park where the Summer Olympics were held in 1972.
BMW headquarters is the cylindrical tower to the far right.

We have had a 360 degree view of the city and now it is time to go back down

Back on the street

One of the many human statues found plying their trade in Munich's pedestrian streets

It was at this time we decided to go visit Oktoberfest out of curiosity. It lasts for 16 days and draws 6 million extra tourists to Munich. We walked to the festival site. I don't have my own photos to show you so I have borrowed some from Wikipedia to give you an idea of what to expect there. We had ZERO idea of what to expect and were in for a surprise at the scale of the event.

Here's a shot of the funfair part

But beer and food are the main draw. There are huge tents set up by each of the breweries and people sit at communal tables drinking beer and eating good food while a live band plays happy German music. We visited the Spaten Brewery tent as that's a favorite beer of mine but once we got inside we only stayed for a couple of minutes as it was so noisy and crowded.

Here's a photo that will give you an idea of the size of the tents...

and another tent

We fled and caught a taxi back to our hotel to sit on our balcony and listen to the Blackbirds sing.

Dinner on Saturday, our last night, involved the discovery of a great German restaurant which is under the clock tower of the Town Hall in Marienplatz called the Ratskeller (Town hall cellar). It's a warren of underground dining rooms serving good German food staples, seating over 1,000 diners.
They also have an outdoor restaurant in the town hall courtyard seating several hundred more...

We were up early on Sunday morning and packed for our flight home to Chicago.

It had been a great week of discovery of places we would return to again and again over the years- Munich, Rothenburg and Oberwesel all worked their magic on us: and all because I needed a new car and found out about the BMW European Delivery Program and took advantage of it.

We enjoyed our last breakfast in the tranquil hotel garden

It's a small hotel but it does everything with style

I've mentioned the "simple German breakfasts" during this blog so here are some photos to illustrate

Hard boiled eggs are maybe the only hot food you'll find (look inside the ceramic chicken!)

German bread station

A hearty breakfast and then we took a taxi to Flughafen  Munchen (Airport). One thing to be aware of- due to Oktoberfest  processions of horse-drawn beer wagons in festive garb we were held up by street closures and our driver had to make some detours to get us out of the city.

We always allow a time-cushion when going to the airport so we weren't late.

That's the end of our first visit to Munich. We have returned in 2005, 07, 08, 09 and 2013.

We'll be back!

Munich for the weekend

I had called Harms, the shipping agent for BMW, to let them know we were returning from Oberwesel and they were happy to hear that as they wanted to close the office early so they could go to the opening of Oktoberfest. That was a surprise. Oktoberfest? Yikes, that would mean Munich would be thronged with even more tourists than usual. Oh, well.

Thanks to the Satellite Navigation I was able to find Harms' office in the outskirts of Munich. Other cars due to be shipped were already there.

I inspected mine from nose to tail to make sure there were no dings or scruffs before handing over the keys.

It looked good and I hoped nothing would have changed before I saw it again back in the USA.

Once the 30 minutes of paperwork was done they called a taxi to come pick us up to drop us back at our hotel- The Admiral once again.

This time we had a room on the 4th floor, overlooking the garden and this would be the room we would book on subsequent visits as it was quiet and we now had a balcony to sit on and enjoy the beautiful weather

Once settled in we unpacked and prepared to hit the streets on a lovely Friday afternoon.
We passed through Victualien Market on our way to Marienplatz for lunch. The market features beers from each of the Munich Breweries-each one gets a week to showcase their beer in a rotation.

The Breweries emblems are displayed

We come to Marienplatz, the tourist and locals' hub of the city

Yes a crowd has gathered-this would be the 5 pm mechanical Jousting Knights show

We had a meal here- bratwurst und pomme frites (French fries) washed down with big glasses of beer. The square is ringed with restaurants offering beer and outdoor dining. Even though the square is swarming with people they are all in a good mood and here to enjoy the experience without bothering anyone or causing trouble. It's all about eating and drinking and talking to friends. I feel very at home among German people-they know how to live and have respect for others. Striking up a conversation with one is easy as they are great talkers and love to practice their English which makes me feel embarrassed by my tourist German- but I try and that's the least anyone can do. I'll get better!!

Tonight would be a special night as we had tickets for the Bavarian State Opera (above) who were performing a work by Richard Strauss- Elektra. If you've never been to the opera I wouldn't suggest Elecktra as a first opera as it's deep and dramatic. Start instead with Puccini's La Boheme or Bizet's Carmen which are full of songs you'll be whistling on your way home and have easy to follow stories.

It was a great night and we loved the opulent theater and the friendly people we met there.

We walked on air back to the Admiral, through dimly lit but safe streets.

Next-a Bird's Eye view of Munich....

Room at the Top

Here's our little round hotel room

and the view from the bedroom window

A small lounge area

There was a decanter with some brandy and a bowl of apples awaiting us-a nice touch

The bathroom with it's gold-plated bidet faucets. The shower alas was one of those hand held only units so one had to kneel in the bathtub ( not shown) to prevent soaking the floor as there was no shower curtain.

A small but cosy hotel room. We had a 19 inch TV and  a CD player with speakers and a  lot of books to read if we chose to.

We spent most of our room time sitting on the balcony which has two small benches with a table between them. 

The hotel has a fine dining restaurant which is open to the public. We were offered a complimentary dinner there and accepted. It was a great meal- German food -but elegantly presented and with excellent service from a young polished waitstaff. It also saved us having to go down to Oberwesel and hunt for food.

Afterwards we sat outside in a small courtyard, looking up at the stars. I rounded off my meal with an excellent espresso and Samba before retiring for the night. We were lulled to sleep by the sound of a Nightingale singing merrily on the castle ramparts.

Next morning we enjoyed a typical German breakfast, again complimentary, in a beautiful room on the ground floor. There is also an outdoor terrace if you want to dine with a Rhine view.

This little path and archway lead to the outdoor terrace from outside

Some random hotel shots...

Another beautiful sunny day!

After breakfast and a walk around the property we decided on an excursion to some more Rick Steves recommendations- Castle Burg Eltz and the riverside town of Beilstein on the banks of the nearby river Rhone which is known as the Mosel in Germany. This would involve climbing up, away from the river and over the verdant pastures 1,000 feet above and then down the other side. The car would do all the climbing of course and I would just drive it, without breaking a sweat.

Here we are half an hour later, deep in the countryside with Burg Eltz in the valley behind

There's a small shuttle bus that will save you this long walk downhill and back again

Alas, no photos of the interior. We took a guided tour but flash wasn't allowed owing to the many tapestries hanging on the walls, some of them of an "adult nature" but we also got to see the ancient kitchen- basically a huge open fireplace where pots could be hung to heat.

There was of course a gift shop and a small cafe where I was able to quench my thirst with a beer on a bench outside-very civilized.

The sleuths among you will realize that the Eltz photos are from 2005 which was our 2nd stay in Oberwesel. The 2005 trip is a blog of the future and may be a year away from appearing here but I figured that if anyone reading this Oberwesel section was interested in going there or to nearby Cologne you might be interested to see what day trips you could make. Pencil in a visit to Burg Eltz!

After the castle we drove on towards the Rhone/Mosel and passed through the town of Cochem but didn't stop as it was so busy with tourists. We drove along the Mosel to Beilstein where we planned to have lunch at Haus Lippman which is the hotel of choice for Rick Steves. We dined outdoors and the food-basic German meat and potatoes-was superb.

Here's Beilstein

The view from our lunch table

The vineyards

A pleasant drive back to the hotel to relax before dinner. Tonight we would branch out and return to the quaint town of Bacharach for a quiet dinner outdoors at sunset. We drove back to the castle in the dark and enjoyed a drink before bedtime. In the morning we would have to leave and drive to Munich to hand the car over to the shippers-Harms and Co. They would get it on a ship and send it to New Jersey and from there it would be trucked to Indiana to my dealership. That took 5 weeks of waiting for me.

Next morning we packed after breakfast then took one last look down onto Oberwesel

We loaded up the car

and were soon blasting down the Autobahn to Munich