Sekunde Tag

Day 2:  We started the day off by going to Karlsplatz so we could go to the Frauenkirche. Karlsplatz is a main platz, that was the site of some Nazi parades. 

Unfortunately they’re doing construction on one of the towers in the front of the church.  The interior of the church is neatly decorated, very spacious and Gothic looking.  The devils footprint in the very front of the church was almost overlooked, and there is some royal crypt underneath the altar. 

 

After this we walked to the Marienplatz and Hofbrauhaus to see everything before we went to the Residenz Museum. You know, the famous place of the Glockenspiel, and the famous beer hall where Hitler gave speeches

 

The Residenz Area is huge, and the national theater is there, and a statue of the former king.  We started off with the treasury since its smaller, and they have some neat stuff from royal regalia to reliquaries, to very fancy dishes. My personal favorite is the reliquary of St. George, since that knight jousting is insanely detailed.   And seeing the crown jewels, was pretty cool I guess.

Then we went to the residenz museum, the audio guide said they were currently renovating it, so only 90 rooms were open to visit. Only 90!!!!  The first couple rooms you go into, it’s small, not that detailed and not very interesting.  The outdoor fountains were neat, and I especially love the Perseus/Medusa fountain, since water sprouts out of the beheaded Medusa and from her body.  Then we got to the Antiquarium, and this thing was amazing.  It’s dedicated to his ancient Roman sculpture busts collection, and this was just awesome to see, probably my favorite part of this museum. 

Then we went through at least 50-60 of the rooms, for unimportant people, elector people, antechamber this and that, visiting rooms for Holy Emperors.  The furniture looked uncomfortable, and so did the beds. It wasn’t that detailed, and reminds me of a Pitti Palace type palace in Florence.  One highlight was the emperor’s hall, where it was gigantic.  And all the tapestries on one side of the room were dedicated to beheadings from David and Goliath, to Judith Beheading Holofernes. Seriously, it was like a headless horsemen's fetish in there. We finally got to their private collection of relics, and one of the relics was insane, because it was a dead baby.  You could see it's dead wrinkled baby feet. Gnarly!

 After we finally got through the museum, tired and a little bit bored, we left so we could watch the Glockenspiel thing in the Marienplatz, that every tourist must do.  The song goes on for 10 minutes, but the action only lasts for half of it, it's like two jousting rounds, then people dancing, then lots of music and nothing happening.

 We then went to eat lunch in the Viktalienmarkt  public outdoor market/eating area.  The beer station rotates every so often between Munich companies, and for today it was Paulaner, so we had Paulaner helles beer today.  I had that, my first Brezel in Germany, and finally a really good bratwurst.   

We then walked  to the Oktoberfest/Beer Museum which was cheap, only 6 euros for the four of us. Particularly because its small, 90% of it is in German, and the only cool thing to look at were the older steins from the breweries.  They also had some facts and portraits about the founders of each of the big six breweries in Munich.  The old steins were cool to look at though, its just too bad most descriptions of shit were in Deutstch.  And basic high school Deustch doesn't cover that.  We got to drink Hofbrauhaus’s special Tegernsee beer at the end of the visit.   

 

We then made our way to Marienplatz then to Odeonplatz so we could get to the Field Marshals' Halls  modeled after the Loggia in Florence. I got to step inside the Theatinerkirche and got to see the nicely detailed marble sculpture/plaster on the walls.  

 Then we finally made it back to our area, and I decided to walk to the Statue of Bavaria since we are staying near it. It’s a nice walk in the park to get there, and then you see a gigantic statue.  It's also in the park where they hold Wiesn (Oktoberfest), so the park is ginormous.  The statue really is huge, but by the time I got there, it started to rain and I didn’t have my umbrella so I left.  It was raining stupid bad, but I guess Davis got lost trying to find his way to  the hotel, he got destroyed by the rain.  

We went to the Paulaner beer hall for dinner, and I finally got to try my Schweinshaxe, or pig knuckle.  Also had another brezetl, and a Hefe-Weiss beer.  I’ve been getting extremely full from my meals, and ending in food comas from the food and beer, which has been delicious.