Day 4 & 5 Munich / Bavaria

Falling a little behind on the blogging so I am combining a couple of days. very sorry to have to leave Berlin this morning, but it was time to move on to a new adventure. We had a great last night in East Berlin walking around the neighbourhood, stopping for supper at one place, stopping at an other for a beer at a very local pub, shopping for breakfast, since we have to be at the airport so early.

Finding everything in the airport was pretty straight forward, boarding pass, luggage check, security all went well, although we were about 15 mins later leaving the airport for Munich. Things were smooth at at the airport in Munich, met up with the tour guide, got to the Westin Grand Hotel around 11 am. The place was very busy had to wait till the later afternoon to get into the room. We went out for lunch found a great deli / meat market, then strolled around and found an open air market going on just a couple of blocks away.

Check in to the hotel and went down to the bar for a met and greet with everyone that is on our tour. we are a full tour of 40 people, 26 from the USA, 8 form Australia, 2 from the UK and 2 from Canada ( yours truly). Nice people for the most part, I think about one third are right around our age, a couple of couples younger and the rest in the late 60s. guide is good ... But he rambles on ....
Munich is a really nice city, we went to St Peter square, bus ride around to get oriented, BMW plant, headquarters, museum, Olympic stadium, etc

Day 5 6:00 AM wake up call, great buffet breakfast and off to our first full day of touring through the German Alps. The scenery was amazing! As much as I appreciate the highlights of these old European cities,I always feel more at peace in the countryside and today was no exception. The flora was similar to home in a lot of ways. Rolling green fields, evergreen forests, cattle grazing, but the difference was that it was all against a backdrop of The Alps. We toured to King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein's Castle. A fairy tale place. Disney used it for Sleeping Beauty's prototype castle. A beautiful Baroque style church in a pastoral setting, and a visit to Oberammergau, where the Passion Play has been enacted every 10 years since 1634 completed our tour. Once back in Munich we, of course, had to have dinner and a stein ( no stein for me) at the Munich Hofbrauhaus.

I just want to add a note to our Berlin post. I loved the bicycle culture there. Tons of people using bicycles for transportation. Everyone obeyed the traffics rules, cars, pedestrians and cyclists alike. It worked ! There were bicycle lanes on most streets , often at the expense of the sidewalk, but that was ok. Ottawa could take a lesson..

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