Tuesday morning, Russ had to go off and take care of business, so it was just Jess, Brandon and me. We decided to spend the day in Munich, Germany, the capital of Bavaria. It was cold and snowing, but we still had a super time.
There was a big statute of King Maximilian in the center of the square. The
Schatzkammer der Residenz (Treasury in the Residence) is also in this square. It's a museum that houses treasures collected by the
Wittelsbach family over approximately 300 years.
This is one of the Crown Jewels. There were quite a lot of these pieces in the
Residenz. It was very impressive.
This is one of the kings portable alters. The details on it were very impressive.
There were quite a few pieces like this one, carved out of crystal. It was extremely hard to carve these pieces, so only the very rich collected them. They called it the ice that never melts.
This is a lady's traveling case, and it contained everything a royal would need on her trips. It had everything from her makeup and nail clippers, to a pop out drawer on the side that concealed eating utensils.
I had to take a picture of this fish, because it reminded me of an awesome piece of jewelry that my friend Valency made in one of her art classes.
After touring the
Residenz, we walked a few blocks over to the
Marienplatz (Mary's Square). This is the heart of Munich. This building is the
Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall). The Old Town Hall is just off this square, too, but it was found to be too small for the growing city, so it was replaced by this one between 1867 and 1908.
Here is another view of the Town Hall. Notice all of the tourists standing around, looking up, and waiting for the Glockenspiel to start it's performance?
On the top of the Town Hall is the Glockenspiel (play clock). During the war, it was covered with concrete, to protect it from
artillary and theft.
This is a close up of the clock. When it chimes, it plays a series of songs, and the 32 life sized characters on the clock spin and rotate. The clock only does this at 11 am and noon during the winter, and an additional performance at 5 pm during the summer months. The top level shows a knights tournament with jousting, and the bottom has dancers.
After enjoying the Glockenspiel's performance, we walked over to warm up at the
HofBrauhaus, one of the city's oldest breweries. It's also a famous restaurant.
We beat the lunch crowd, so we had a chance to really check the place out.
They had a live band there, performing traditional German music while we ate out lunch. I thought of you while we listened, Grandpa. This was definitely your kind of place! They even had a pretzel girl in traditional dress walking around, selling her pretzels and gingerbread cookies.
Brandon was really digging into his pretzels when his soup arrived. We ordered him beef soup with a liver dumpling. It was very cold outside, so he wanted to warm up with some hot soup. We figured we'd just dig out the little dumplings and he could eat the broth. Check out the size of this dumpling. It's solid, ground up liver. Yes. You read that correctly. A huge ball of liver. In case you were wondering, Brandon wouldn't touch the thing, but the rest of us at our table had a blast tasting it and being really silly. It tasted pretty much like it looked. No disrespect to those liver lovers out there...but
ick! The waiters thought we were a tad strange. Such is life.
After checking out the city a little more and warming up with coffee and caramel hot chocolate at the local Starbucks (How American is that??), we headed back to the square to get back on the bus.
Thanks for letting us spend the day in your wonderful city, Max. Good-bye. (Wave good-bye to Max. You wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.)
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