15.08.2011 – 15.08.2011  24 °C

Had a bit of a sleep in this morning as knowing it was a Monday I knew that many of the attractions wouldn’t be open so I would have a fairly quiet day siteseeing wise. First stop was to the tourist office and found out that I could get a train/ bus and tram ticket for three days for a cost of 12 E. After buying myself a ticket I took the subway to downtown (two stops a way) to see Marienplatz.

Marienplatz is the main town square in Munich and houses the old town hall and the Glockenspiel. The Glockenspiel is the clock that is housed on the steeple of the old town hall and at 11am and 12pm the Glockenspiel comes alive. Like most big clocks it chimes out the hour and then the actual moving figures come to life. The Glockenspiel is pretty amazing.. there are even two horses with steel clad knights jousting!

After watching the Glockenspiel I decided to go for a walk around downtown to see some of the other sites. As I started to walk I realised that heaps of the shops and attractions were closed.. I mean it is a Monday (which means some stuff in Europe will be closed) but surely not the whole town! It also started to rain quite heavily which was not fun (considering there was no where to hide from the rain).

I finally found a café that was open so sat down to fill out some postcards, have a coffee and wait for the rain to abate. Finally the rain let up for a while so looking through my guide book I decided to go out to the English Garden (big park in the city) as I knew it would be open! Rode the subway the couple of stops before arriving at the English Garden. With a name like English Garden I was expecting lots of box hedges, flowers etc but was pleasantly surprised to find that the English Garden is just the name for this huge big park. It is that big that there are horse riding trails through the park! There is also a river running through the park which was flowing at a pretty fast rate (quick enough to go rafting on!)

Spent a beautiful afternoon just walking around the park (the rain held off for a couple of hours!). Finally had a break from walking in the middle of the park at the HofBrau. The HofBrau in the English Garden is the beer garden that is often shown in travel brochures etc for Munich. I stopped had a beer and some pomme frittes and just soaked up the atmosphere.

Finally left around 8pm and headed back to the hotel for a quiet night in. Off to Neuschwanstein Castle tomorrow (Mad King Ludwig’s masterpiece).