Today we had the best tour guides – Tour Guide Barbie and Tour Guide Ken, though sometimes he went by his other alias, Hasselhof!

Emily and Shane took turns leading us around Munich today via Rick Steves’ self-guided tour. It was an awesome day! We started out with our first tram ride through the city to the pedestrian zone and did some shopping. Chris’ raincoat wasn’t cutting it so we went into a sporting goods store and spent some time shopping and exploring. Daily “chores” are always so interesting in other places – so similar and yet so different.

Then Tour Guide Barbie took over the itinerary and lead us all over. We saw so much it’s hard to recall all of it! I loved seeing the Viktualienmarkt and all of the churches. We saw four today – St. Peter’s, St. Michael’s, Frauenkirche, and Asamkirche. All so beautiful in completely different ways. The Frauenkirche may be Munich’s iconic symbol, but it’s dull looking in comparison to the Baroque  explosion of Asamkirche! St. Michael’s was really nice…but way cool because it’s also the family church of King Ludwig II, the Bavarian king we’ve been chasing all over for a week! (More to come tomorrow!!) This church is also his final resting place – the family crypt was beautiful in its creepy way.

We detoured from our tour for dinner at Hofbräuhaus, even though it’s super touristy and kind of pricey…it just seemed like something we should do – and we were glad we did! We sat in the Biergarten because it was kind of warm inside and when we got there, not much was happening in the bier hall. It was beautiful in their courtyard – not at all what I was expecting!  For dessert we bought a gingerbread cookie from a pretzel girl…not really very tasty but it made for great photo ops! (And I remembered them from German class so that was pretty cool too!)

We rounded out our tour with more stops near the Hofgarten, which is ultimately where we ended up. On the way, we window shopped and pretended to be able to afford the goods at Prada and Chloe.

After our lovely guides bid us “adieu,” we went back to the apartment for cards and fun! What a fabulous day – certainly one of my favorite for sure! Can’t wait to do it all again tomorrow! Residenz and English Garden, here we come!