Munich Day 2: Walking Tour on Christmas

Merry Christmas! Wishing you good cheer and happiness on what is hopefully a lazy day with your favorite people. Have you signed up for a postcard yet? 

Today was a beautiful, clear Christmas day in Munich! Coming in to this trip I was a bit anxious about traveling over Christmas, but was relieved to wake up and find the cafe across the street open (and serving tasty sandwiches), plus plenty of other sight-seers and pedestrians walking out enjoying the unseasonably warm holiday.

Today we started with a walking tour of the city center. Britton and I have had great success in many cities around Europe using Sandemans New Europe Tours, and they operated their daily "free" tour today, just like any other day. And it was popular — nearly 100 people showed up! (They split the group: one-third were Spanish-speakers and they set off with a native hispanohablante, and the rest of us divided between two guides, so our final group was large but not unruly.) You can see us on their Facebook Page. Every tour is different so how about some photos instead of words?

SO MUCH BEER. They can't *not* talk about beer. It's too connected with Munich and Bavarian history!

Dodger's Alley Memorial. Look it up. Here's a brief but beautiful post from Clare over at Need Another Holiday. It's one of the best memorials that I've come across anywhere in my travels.

After the tour, we sucked it up and paid a bit more than we would have liked at a German-food restaurant. My food was delicious, so I'm dubbing the price tag a "Christmas Surcharge". I ate potato dumplings, which I LOVE. (And I don't like potatoes, so this is saying something, people.) They're gummy-steamed-squishy goodness topped with gravy. DELISH.

To round out a beautiful Christmas day, we made the quick trek out to the grounds of Nymphenburg Palace (my brain immediately associated it with a nympho, so that's been a Freudian slip waiting to happen all day...). It's about 30 minutes outside the city center via public transit. It is a huge (HUGE), wandering palace, originally used as the summer home for the Bavarian royal family. Tough life. But it's really beautiful and the grounds are open year-round, even if the palace itself isn't.

Would you get a look at these tourists? Gosh. So cliché!

Britton: "Why did we stop?"

Me: "You're going to stick your arm out and take a pic of us smashing our faces together in front of this palace!"

And we found a bakery that is strategically positioned between the palace (which is a big tourist attraction) and the tram stop to get back to town. I ate a croissant stuffed with apricot filling and dusted with powdered sugar. I will never meet its equal.

Also a beautiful sunset to end the day. OMG THE SUN WAS OUT ALL DAY. The WHOLE day. All of it. Sunny sunny sunshine. Merry Christmas to me!