Meanwhile, in Munich

Friday, October 12, 2018
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Well, four more days have flown by.
Tuesday morning, Dachau.  Not fun, but important.  The photos can't hope to capture the chilling feeling of visiting this place, the same feeling I remember vividly from my first visit 33 years ago.
When we got back, we wandered around Mariensplatz, the tourist centre of town for a while, had lunch, and found our way back to our apartment across the river using just a compass--I was quite proud.  In the evening we met our friend Wolfgang, who used to live in Toronto, after his work and he took us for a walk around to see some more sights and then out for dinner at Haxnbaur, a place that specializes in pig's knuckles.  I just had some slices--even half a knuckle looked like way too much for me.
Wednesday, we just did some sightseeing in town.  We eventually made our way up to the English Garden and saw a very small sample of the huge park.  We did see the Eisbach River surfers, though.  Right at the edge of the park, off a main road, they actually surf in the fast-flowing river rapids.  Very cool.  Then wandered over to the Hauptbahnhoff along the pedestrian mall and grabbed some schnitzel for lunch (shared, we're getting smarter, or were).  Then, Carol had seen a dessert, at the place we had lunch the day before that she really wanted to try, so we had it.  It was more food than our meal, and cost more than any dessert I have ever seen, but it was delicious.  Later, after we recovered, and we went out for dinner, we popped our heads into the Hofbrauhaus but it was just a bit too much, so we ended up each having a nice bowl of goulash soup at a place just across the street from it.
Thursday, Wolfgang was driving us down to the foothills of the Bavarian Alps to see King Ludwig's "favourite castle", Linderhof.  We went out to meet him at Pasing station and we headed out.  There is a lovely park surrounding the castle, which itself is not really that big, and the setting is really lovely just to wander around.  None of us were that keen to see the inside of the castle, which was only available through guided tours, so we just wandered and explored and enjoyed the mountain views.  Then we stopped down the road a bit for a nice lunch with the mountains looming over us.  Next, we went to see the nearby Ettal Monastery. On the way home, we stopped in a little village called Oberammergau that had all kinds of interesting houses painted with scenes and designs and that had a surprisingly impressive little church.  We sat outside and had a coffee and then headed home.  That night we had some very good pizza's from a little restaurant just down our street, called Pizzesco.
Friday, for our last day, we had decided to do something a bit off the beaten track.  We headed for a different area of the Bavarian Alps, to Mount Wendelstein, a peak of about 1750 metres that you reach via a "cog railway" (you can also reach it via cable car from the other side).  We caught a regional train for the 45 minute ride to the town of Brannenburg and then walked along a scenic path for half an hour to reach the base of the cog railway.  A spectacular ride up and then the views from the top were really spectacular.  I wouldn't do the climb up to the very top of the mountain where the observatory is--my fear of heights wouldn't let me do the winding trail on the rock face.  We also went down into the Wendelsteinhohle, a cave that goes down deep into the mountain, part of a large cave system that is very unusual at such a high altitude.   The weather was once again tremendous and we spent some time just sitting in the sunshine and admiring the views.  Then we retraced our steps back to town and settled in with left-over pizza to pack and finish our blogs.
And that's it, we catch our flight home tomorrow at noon.  Hard to believe it's over!  But I am now looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.

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