Saturday, July 1, 2023
Step Count: 22,953 Anika, 23,856 Nathan
Obviously, we are still waiting in it.
Last night, Nathan worked a little. He answered emails at dinner. He called his boss. He called the City of Boulder. There’s some funny business happening with a permit fee of some kind and he’s trying to get to the bottom of it. He’s actually been checking his email periodically throughout the trip.
My workplace, as chaotic as it’s been since last November’s Utila trip, has at least one redeeming quality. The IT department is so security conscious that whenever we leave the country, I’m forced to uninstall both email and ‘Teams’ and fully disconnect. I’ve heard, you can clear your international access with the powers that be, but what’s the point in that? Frankly, I don’t want to know about the chaos and mayhem I’m missing. That can wait until we touch ground in the US again. Tomorrow.
That said, what Nathan did was brief, considerate, and non-stressful. It was past 9 pm our time, after dinner, on a rainy day, and time-wise was a good use of time and set him up in a good place for our return. I was in bed trying to sleep, with eye mask on, because Nathan’s lights bother the sleeping beauty. Ha!
Our return: tomorrow we fly home via Lufthansa, Munich straight to Denver. And when we get home, we can’t flush the toilet or take a shower. So excited. We have a plumber scheduled to come to the house on Monday morning, but I’m not exactly sure what we are supposed to do until Donald, the turd-dirt-hairball, is evicted. Pee in the yard? Just don’t flush?
Today we woke up to the pitter-patter of rain outside the window. Wunderbar! We went down to breakfast and then packed the urban backpack to head out. We had no real goals for today, but we did look at a book last night at dinner and we have a loose plan.
First thing after breakfast we walked down to St Peter’s church. We toured the inside of the church and saw the bones of St Munditia, the patron saint of spinsters. Legend has it, she was beautiful and beheaded with a hatchet.
As an aside, it seemed a little unfair that the spinsters had a saint, so I Googled it…married people also have a saint, St Joseph, although I gather he wasn’t beheaded by a hatchet.
After the church, we were in WC hunting mode. There was a bakery across the street from St Peter’s, and at my suggestion, we ordered a pastry, which we didn’t need, and sparkling apple juice, only to find that there was no WC for patrons. Damn! We should have figured given the touristy area and scoped it out before selecting the pastry, but that is a little weird. I prefer the nonchalant, after pastry, ‘I just need to wash my hands’ visit to the loo.
I asked Nathan what do we do, and he said ‘go to a museum’. So to the Munich Residenz we went. We bought the combo ticket for the Residenz, treasury, and theater. We also picked up the free audioguide.
We started touring the rooms of the Residenz, listening to the audioguide, and after room 45, we opted for the ‘long tour’. Oh my, how did the Wittelsbach’s even find each other in this place? We’ve been on our feet touring rooms for hours! We had to stop listening to the audioguide because we would still be touring rooms and listening to the guide come Christmas.
Instead, we enjoyed each room using our eyes, knowing we could not absorb any more facts from the audioguide.
By 12:30, we had finished the tour of the Residenz, so we collected our backpack from the coat check, ate the sandwiches we pilfered from the breakfast buffet, and then returned the backpack to the coat check and set off on the tour of the treasury. Thankfully, the treasury was only 10 rooms. (!)
After the treasury, we only had the theater left, which didn’t open until 2 pm, so we found a small cafe and sat for a coffee. The waitress was a sour thing and the kid behind me kept humming the same song, which was not identifiable, so as soon as we could, we paid up and got out of there. To be fair to the waitress, they seemed a little understaffed or overworked for the amount of business they attracted.
From that point, the theater was a quick tour, and we finished up the Residenz. It was very interesting and very beautiful, but wow, what an overload. If even half of the collection is original and not a replica, the city of Munich has a wonderful collection of its history right there to be viewed. Now, many of the rooms were reconstructed after WWII, but some of the furnishings were original.
From the Munich Residenz, we walked through the Viktualienmarkt and its assault to the senses before heading back towards Marienplatz.
Then, back to St. Peter’s to finish up at St Peter’s tower, overlooking the city. Up, up, up the 306 steps to the top through chaotic narrow 2-way traffic staircases. Can you believe we paid money for more climbing?!
By now it was 3:30, and we just wanted to spend some time at an outdoor cafe and chill. I lead us from Marienpplatz, past a vegan street fair of some kind, to the Augustiner Beer Garden, where we sat under the trees, and had an early dinner. We enjoyed the ambiance and relative quiet, under the shade with a big beer for Nathan and wine for me. Although, the waiter did say that it was just a regular beer (1-liter), when I lost my head and said ‘oh my God, your beer is huge’ to Nathan. Time and place, time and place.
We stayed at the beer garden for a few hours and enjoyed a currywurst with fried potatoes, a large pretzel, and a large fried fish that we thought was going to be on a stick but wasn’t. Perhaps we are getting our Rick Steves episodes confused! Not sure how successful Vegan Fest 2023 is going to be in a place where we’ve been served pork daily at every meal! And I love pork, but at this point in the trip, can I have chicken?
After the beer garden, we walked back towards our hotel to find our last gelato of the trip. Gelato in hand, we walked back to our hotel and packed up our bags for the trip home.