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!