Munich - Parks, Lederhosen & Castles

Munich is our favourite Germany city. We have had a great time here.

July 25, we started off the day by walking through a park on our way to city center. We saw a playground and decided to have a seat and watch kids play. I know it sounds a little creepy and maybe it is, but we can't help it. Kids are so funny and so interesting to watch. We saw something we have never seen before at the playground. It was all Dads playing with their kids, no Moms in sight. It was really nice to see. At one point a little girl called to her father, "dah dah, dah dah!", to which he shouted, 'JaAaa'. We found our favourite Father/Son, and they were so cute Andrew took a couple of pictures of them. Here is Alex playing with his Dad.

After being creepy people watching kids at a playground we went to the main square called Marienplatz and to the royal palace called Residenz. The 'Culture Cup' was on, where a bunch of different sports (mainly fussball) were played along with other games and activities. Andrew and I had our picture taken by the local radio station. I think this makes us local celebrities now. Right?

We managed to catch the new Twilight movie. We have been going through a movie theater drought as we haven't seen a movie in a theater since the B Team was here almost 2 months ago. It was a great movie, but now we have to wait for the next one to be released.

July 26 was dedicated to exploring the Englischer Garden, one of the biggest city parks in all of Europe. Munich knows how to do gardens! We walked into one of the park entrances and saw a guy surfing in the river.

Then we had lunch overlooking a beautiful waterfall in the park.

Then we decided to go to the beer garden for a beer. Bavarian beer garden are very special; they serve beer by the litre. Below is what will forever be remembered as 'A Big Mistake'.

As we were drinking our beer, we looked over and to see group of men roll up on bicycles dressed in lederhosen. I thought that people who dressed in lederhosen were a myth. At one point, when they were finishing up their litre beers, they all 'moo'd' into their glasses very loudly. It was hilarious, and to my embarrassment, we laughed out loud so hard that they all looked over at us and started laughing with us. One of them even gave me a loud 'moo' when I took my next drink, just for a laugh. We managed to strike up a conversation with them as they were leaving. They're a group of carpenters from Austria. I'm still not sure why they were dressed up in lederhosen, although we tried to figure it out through the language barrier.

Round two of 'A Big Mistake'... with our moo'ing friends in the background.

July 28 we went to Fussen to see some castles. It was a gorgeous area. Here is a picture of the first castle, 'Schloss Hohenschwangau'.

The Disneyland castle is supposedly modeled after this castle, 'Schloss Neuschwanstein'.

We are sad to be leaving Germany and will definitely miss Munich, but tomorrow we are off to Austria. I can't wait for the Sound of Music Tour and of course Andrew can't either...