Day 21 - Munich

Munich is the capital of Bavaria and home to Bayern Munich Football Club. We made our way to the city centre to see the legendary clock in Marienplatz Square which puts on a show of moving characters and musical church bells at 11 o'clock everyday. A huge group of tourists gather everyday to see this and we were no different as we watched it do its thing. You can see a picture of it below (you had to be there to get the idea).


As the city centre of Munich isn't the biggest around, it was easy to navigate on foot so we wandered around looking at some of the wonderful sights of the city. As the underground was amazing, we bought a day pass and decided to make the most of it so we ventured out of the city centre. There was still time for Sam's “near death experience”. Whilst looking out the window into the darkness of the U-bahn tunnels, she seen a tube train hurtling towards her looking like it would smash into the side of our carriage. She jumped out her seat nearly hitting the guy sitting next to her, only to discover that it wasn't another train but the reflection of our train in a MIRROR!!!! I laughed a lot.

The aim of our trip outside of the centre was to visit the home of Bayern Munich and 1860 Munich football club, the recently built Allianz Arena. The inside of this stadium looks just like any other football stadium, but the outside is just amazing!!! A thin white “balloon” type coating surrounds the stadium which is often lit up at night and in different colours during match days. There is a photo of the stadium below. It just looks like a stretched golf ball with the checked detail pattern on the side of it.


Our next stop in Munich was the marvellous former home of Bayern and the 1972 Olympic Games - Munich's Olympic Park. Only a short underground journey from the Allianz Arena brought us to park which contains most venues including the swimming pool, the indoor arena and its crowning glory, the Olympic Stadium. We wandered around before climbing the Olympia-Berg which is a hill in the park which gives a great view of each of the venues, a fabulous view across the rooftops of Munich and also the BMW headquarters and Allianz Arena in the background. We bet that this Olympic park looks better than the one being built for London 2012!!



We headed back into the city to see more of the sights including Karlsplatz, St Micheals church and Asamkirche Dominikanerinnen (below).

Within a “short” walk from our hotel was the English Garden, one of Europes largest city centre gardens, so we decided to head back to our hotel, find a supermarket for some food and beer and go down to the garden for a picnic. We bought some cheap beer and walked down towards the garden but by the time we got there we were both knackered so consulted the map and headed up through the gardens back to the hotel. What looked like a short journey on the map took us an hour to do, so by the time we got back to the hotel, a quick snack, the cheap beer (which was good!!) and then off to bed.