I'll briefly log here some of the great things we did while Mom and Dad were here (from Oct 4 - 11) since it gave us yet more chances to enjoy Munich and Bavaria. For this post, I'll just begin with the first couple days of their visit.
After the quick Oktoberfest tour (previous post) we met the kids and Thomas who had all gotten out of school/work early on the Friday. Since it was a gorgeous day, we climbed up the 302 narrow steps of Alte Peter (the tower of the oldest church in the city) to get the classic 360 view of the Munich skyline.
It's hard to take a picture of the Alte Peter church itself (St. Peter's Church) since it's surrounded by many other buildings, but here's the inside.
That evening we hit a classic bierhalle-restaurant for some good Bavarian roast pork, potatoes, sauerkraut, and beer. Good fuel for the next day's hiking!
Since the weekend weather was only looking good for Saturday, we got up early to fit in a full day in the Alps -- again to our favorite region of Garmisch-Patenkirchen. We took Mom and Dad on the same wonderful hike we'd done in August - not the Alpspitze, but the less strenuous and absolutely gorgeous Partnachklamm hike...
The weather was perfect. After taking the cable-car up and hiking through a mix of forest and meadow, we had a hot lunch at the little farm "Hutte" near the top of the mountain.
The gorge "Patnachklamm"is essentially how you get off the mountain and back down to town.
Perfect day hike.
We got back to the train station just after 4 p.m. Now a choice: the town of Mittenwald lies half an hour by train south from Garmisch, and we had all hoped to go if we got back from the hike early enough. Mittenwald is apparently a quaint little town in the Alps that has been famous for violin, viola and celllo making since the 17th century. Mom's violin, that Benjamin now plays, was made there (!) at least 60 years ago and Mom really wanted to go see the town. Unfortunately, the next train would not get us there until 6 p.m., and any sort of wandering around and finding dinner would mean not getting back to Munich (2 hours on the train) until quite late. Benjamin really wanted to go back home, so I volunteered to go with him, and Thomas and Julia took Mom and Dad on down. Sounds like the town was beautiful, and Mom was delighted to have seen it. I'll have to make a day trip of it myself soon (and maybe see about getting Julia a viola there?)
Sunday in Munich was rainy, which gave us all a good excuse to relax and do very little... well the kids actually did homework, and I had a 4-hour Bach Choir rehearsal, but Mom and Dad had some well-deserve down-time after a very full day in the Alps.
More touristy time in Munich to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment