Munich: The tale of 19

The (Hopefully) Sunshine Day Tour of Munich started at 9am and an S-bahn trip to Schloss Nymphenburg "Nymph's Castle" for a walk around the English Garden. Munich is incredibly proud of its parks and it has every reason to be. Nymphenburg Palace has the main summer residence of the Bavarian rulers. The central pavilion was completed in 1675 and later rulers added extensions in each direction.

The gardens are rather extensive and we only explored a small section of it (apparently its a rather time-consuming activity).

Moving on from yet another schloss (I'm racking up rather a collection) we moved on to Hirschgarten and the largest beergarden in Munich. Hirschgarten still has some deer in the park, but the main attraction is now the beer and "Bavarian breakfast". We stopped for a typical Bavarian snack of pretzel, potato salad (vinegar instead of mayo) and cheese and butter spread.

After our very 'nutritious' snack we visited the site of the Oktoberfest which is currently being prepared for the hoardes (last year they sold 6.5 million litres of beer). The statue of Bavaria watches from above and it is possible to walk to the top of the statues head. 124 steps later we reached the top to get a view of the city.

Next stop on out whirlwind tour was the Olympiapark. Home to the Olympics in 1972, it is nestled in hills constructed from the remains of buildings from the wars. The Olympic Stadium has a very unique roof, constructed of acrylic glass stabilised by steel cables that is meant to imitate the Alps.

The sights just keep on coming, next on our checklist was the English Garden complete with Chinese Tower housing a German beergarden...confused? So was I. By this stage we stopped at a different beergarden(noticing a theme?) for a brief break. Did you know that Munich has its own surfing area, its rather bizarre to watch as the river is probably 7m in width max.

We're slowing circling to the centre of the city with only a few sights to go. The women's church, St Peter's Church, Hofbrauhaus, City Hall for the clock chimes, the market and lastly the Opera. I'm going to skip most of these but must remark that St Peter's Church has the best 360 degree view over the city and is well worth the climb (all 313 steps - I counted). For a full photo reconstruction see FB as I can't post everything here.

Finally I can explain the tale of the 19. It took us 19 hours from start to home again and according to Google Maps, 19kms.