Munich - Day 2

Munich has two palaces, one right in downtown and further out. We decided to go to the one just outside of town, Nymphenburg Palace, which was the summer residence of the Bavarian rulers. We took a bus tour (you know, one of the double decker tourist buses) which dropped us off right at the palace. We enjoyed the beautiful grounds at the entrance, and then made our way into the palace. The palace itself is a bit unconventional in it's build as it has sort of small discrete sections instead of one huge building. This photo shows the palace from the gardens in the back, which were quite beautiful. The front was being remodeled, so we didn't get a good view of it. 

Inside the palace, we were greeted with a beautiful large hall with ornate paintings on the ceiling, and then we got to tour the King's rooms and then the Queen's rooms. Everything was quite beautiful, but unfortunately, we didn't seem to get any photos. I think the most interesting room inside was the 'Gallery of Beauties', which had a large number of portraits of beautiful Bavarian women. The only qualifications to get your painting in the gallery was to be beautiful, so both royals and commoners were pictured. After we saw the inside of the palace, we headed out to the extensive park grounds. This is a photo from the palace balcony looking at the grounds - it was was so pretty, especially with the lovely 70 F weather. We made our way down to the fountain in the middle where we took a photo opportunity.

Mom and Dad wanted to enjoy the main garden for a while, so Andy, Carsten, and I headed out briefly to a 'hunting lodge' where we were greeted with a silver hall of mirrors. And well, we all know that I'm a fan of the Hall of Mirrors, so what's not to love about this other one? It was a bit ironic that this beautiful room was in the 'hunting lodge,' but other than that, it was quite fun.

Carsten was getting a bit antsy, so we made our way back to Mom and Dad Huisman, and got ourselves a quick bite of lunch. Carsten was taking a while to eat, so we sent Mom and Dad ahead to the bus stop while Andy and I finished feeding Carsten his apple-banana-sauce. I would like to proudly say we shoveled his jar of food into his mouth in record time, but we still felt like we were going to be a bit late to get back to the bus stop. It was important to make it back because it only came once an hour and only stopped for about 2 minutes, so you had to be there when it arrived. So, what did we do? We RAN! So, picture this: Andy wearing a backpack, Carsten in his stroller, and Natalie pushing the stroller while running over gravel in a beautiful palace park. Yes, indeed. We made it back with about 5 minutes to spare, so our rush was all for naught. Oh well. We boarded our bus, and Mom and Dad graciously agreed to watch Carsten in the lower deck of the bus while Andy and I went upstairs to the open air deck for the 45 min bus ride past the former Olympic grounds, the BMW headquarters, and the city of Munich. Andy and I enjoyed our time on the bus and reflected that for us, it was a date because neither of us had a baby in our arms :). I'd like to give this caution when riding in an open-air double decker bus: beware the tree branches. Seriously, they can do some damage. We luckily became aware of this issue early on and spent part of the time ducking from tree branches, and thus, we were not injured. Once we got back to the main train station, we switched buses to another bus route that showed us the downtown sites (the other one was a more rural loop). We all stayed on the lower deck, and the nice lulling motion plus the afternoon sun put Carsten, and at times Mom and Dad Huisman, to sleep :). This ride was about an hour and gave a nice overview of the city. So we went back to Odeonplatz, which had one of the large churches, a platform which apparently Hitler stood on at one point, the main palace, and the beginnings of the Englisher Gardens (pictured below in order). 

Since it was Good Friday, the church had a mass in progress so we only got to stand in the back, but it was still fun to go in and observe a mass in German. Well, after walking around this square for a while, we headed back to our hotel after finding some sandwiches. I'll leave you with one last photo of Andy since he wasn't in any of the previous photos: