A Visit to Munich AND Grandma drinks a beer!

Marienplatz Glockienspiel

Today brought us a spring day at the end of January. Such a treat! Steve had some flexibility in his schedule so we took his mom to Munich for the day. We timed our arrival at Marienplatz perfectly to see the Glockienspiel. This is good information for the future, take the 10:16 train!

Next we walked down to the Viktulienmarkt to see the fresh food and flower markets. We of course walked Kay through the lane of souvenir shops leading to the Hofbräuhaus and showed her the massive bier hall.  We strolled through, checking out the locals at their Stammtisch - an informal regular meeting. Some even have signs over their tables marking their spots.  

Afterwards we headed to Steve's favorite brewery restaurant the Franziskaner. We sat in their winter biergarten, an indoor room in the restaurant decorated like an outdoor biergarten. It was really a cute room. Lunch was terrific and not only did Kay have her first wienerschnitzel she also drank a radler. A radler is a mix of half beer and half lemon-lime soda and was invented by bicyclists as a refreshing, "nutritious" drink to have during a bike ride that would still leave them sober to finish the ride. The german word for bicyclists is radler and it eventually became the name of the drink.

Now that we had been fortified we walked past the Opera House and Residenz (yet another palace) to Odeonsplatz. Odeonsplatz is an important place in Munich history. Hitler's first push to power in 1923 was ended here, then during WWII this same spot became a kind of shrine and when passing through people were required to give the honor guard the Nazi salute. Apparently this is when rubbing the noses of the gold lions outside the Residenz became a tradition to show support of the monarchy. 

We also went inside the Theatinerkirche which stands on Odeonsplatz.  It is a beautiful and amazing, I'm waiting to find a church that isn't!

The last part of our journey took us to the Frauenkirche, the church with the famous onion dome towers. There are some different stories about the black "devil's footprint" in the front of the church. One says that the devil made a deal with the builder not to put any windows in the church but the builder positioned the windows so that they weren't visible from where the devil stood.  When the devil realized he had been tricked he stamped his foot making the footprint (which by the way survived WWII) and rushed outside leaving the wind that blows furiously around the church. We can certainly attest to the crazy wind around Frauenkirche!

Our last stop of the day was at Karlsplatz. This wasn't a site seeing stop but instead we were looking for a craft store. And hooray we found it. While it still isn't an American style craft store it is the best one so far. For the moment Idee is my new go to place!

We think we showed Kay quite a bit of the city and she even added a new hat to her collection for her "Red Hatters" lunches! It was a full day in Munich!