Munich!

Hey everyone!!

We just got back from our weekend trip to Munich and Fussen about an hour ago (9pm)! It was SUCH a great trip. We saw so many amazing sights and had a lot of memorable experiences. Here's the line-up:

We went to go for karaoke night at the Irish pub on Thursday night, but it doesn't start until February so our excitement for a full night of singing at the top of our lungs was shot down...but we still had a great time!

Woke up on Friday morning and caught the 630 am bus to the train station. We all slept all the way to Munich. We got in and began our day touring! We went to this amazing pizza/italian place in the heart of Munich and had a great lunch. The place was call Vapiano and it was so modern and had a real chique feel to it! As we were leaving (we were a good 30 minute walk north of our hostel) it began pouring rain out. Half of us didn't even have a hood/hat. Not fun. But we still decided to take advantage of our time and walk to the other sites we wanted to see! We walked through the Englischer Gartens. It was really icey and raining, but still really pretty. We all wished it was sunnier because they're supposed to be gorgeous! We walked probably 5 or 6 miles total and were dead by the time we found our way back to our hostel. We saw a lot of the city during our adventure, though! We finally got to relax a little, then went to the Hofbrauhaus! As Anna would say "It was like a giant frat house." It was quite an experience. The entire restaurant/brewery was SO crowded and people only buy beers in liter mugs. They're HUGE! It was fun though because everyone was just being loud and having a great time. I can't imagine what Oktoberfest is like in the fall...must be crazy! We had dinner and some drinks for a couple of hours then made our way back to the hostel and went to bed.

On Saturday we all got up in time to see the giant Glockenspiel at the famous Rathaus in the middle of the town. It goes off at 11am every day during the winter. It lasted about ten minutes and was very impressive!! After that, we went walking through the town again going in and out of shops and we all bought some souvenirs! Had a great time exploring! After that, we got a little snack for lunch and took the train to the Olympic Stadium. The architecture of the entire park was phenomenal! It was built for the 1972 Olympics in Munich! It is basically a park now and there were a ton of people just walking around and taking in the gorgeous day (it was perfectly sunny and much warmer than the day before)! Then we walked right across the street to the BMW museum. This was just beyond amazing. The museum building was just opened within the past year and the technology and architecture of this building was like nothing I've ever seen before. I kept saying that I felt like I was on a different planet. We got to see all these awesome cars and then they had a special exhibition available and we saw a car that they've been working on for many years now. It is made out of Neoprene (what a wetsuit is made out of kinda) and you can morph it into different looking cars. I don't even know how to explain it other than it was incredible! Then we went to dinner with the group to this local brewery and had a great last meal in Munich.

The city is just so clean and beautiful. The shops are all really nice and the whole atmosphere is so fun. I'm so glad we decided to make a weekend trip out of it.

This morning we woke up and caught and early train to Fussen, Germany. This is where the Neuschwanstein Castle is. The one that a lot of the Disney castles are modeled after. It was so gorgeous! We got a tour of the inside and only 1/3 was finished because the King who had it being built died! Weird! But the view from the top of the mountain where it is is so magnificant! And the weather couldn't have been better!

We had a long trainride back, but it was well worth it! Tomorrow starts another new week so be looking for daily updates!!

Officially back in the RT,

<3 Lauren