Last Day In Munich

Much to Paul’s dismay, our last day in Munich started with me waking him up to go see the daily clocktower display at the Rathaus-Glockenspiel.  The 15-minute show of chiming bells and figurines moving around didn’t impress either of us much since we didn’t know the story it was telling, and Paul decided to spend the next hour being grumpy at me for waking him up for nothing 

When the bells stopped chiming, we headed off in the direction of Viktualienmarkt to look for somewhere to eat brunch, and ended up behind a walking tour group that was English speaking!  They were stopped in front of a building we normally wouldn’t have noticed (it blended in with the other buildings it was attached to except it had a rather nice doorway), and we started to listen-in when the tour guide told the group this was possibly one of Munich’s best hidden-gems.  The building had belonged to Egid and Cosmas Asam, two brothers who lived and worked together in Germany (Egid was a sculptor and plasterer and Cosmas was a painter and architect).  According to the guide, they were quite successful and wanted to build a church in their own Baroque style, but the city wouldn’t support them because there was already enough churches.  Using their own funds, the Asam brothers built this Church of St. Johann Nepomuk as their own private church, but when word got out about how magnificent the interior was they were forced to make the church accessible to the public!  We waited for the tour group to go in and leave and then headed inside to have a look ourselves.  It was actually quite impressive, especially taking into consideration that they did all of this with their own money!

Unable to find anywhere to eat after making our way to Viktualienmarkt, we stopped and googled restaurant suggestions for Munich on Paul’s blackberry.  We read a couple of good reviews about a restaurant called Forum, which serves late brunch on weekends, so we headed over and gave it a try.  The online reviews did not lie – the food was fresh and tasty and service was prompt ?

After eating, we headed to the Englischer Garten at the north end of city center, one of the world’s largest urban public parks (much bigger than Central Park in New York!).  We started to walk across the park to look for the Japanisches Teehaus that was built in 1972 to celebrate the summer olympics that were held in Munich that year, and came across a nude sunbathing area called the Schönfeldwiese, which was mostly full of men (surprise surprise!).  We walked for a while and couldn’t find the teahouse, so we decided to just head out of the park and back to the hotel.  I guess we’re getting a bit lazy with the walking, but the park really wasn’t that exciting!