Sunday June 2nd

Why was Mathew surprised that I know the German word for Breakfast? #Itsallaboutthefood. It was served between 7 - 10am and we thought it a good idea to have an early start as we had a couple of things on our itinerary today - a day in Munich visiting the Deutsches Museum and Schloss Nymphenburg.

 Before we made any decisions, we put the TV on to find a more detailed weather report for Germany.  Still no luck.  When we looked out of the window it looked even wetter than it did yesterday!  Yuck.  Downstairs we headed to the breakfast room which turned out to be in a different place to the restaurant.  We bumped into one of the waitresses at the bottom of the stairs and she showed us through.  It was a large room, but there were only two people in it when we arrived.  We sat down and asked for a cup of tea for Mathew at which point she showed us where the hot water, tea bags and pots were.  After that we were sorted - the buffet had everything you could have asked for, juices, cereals, different types of bread, honey, jam, chocolate spread (yes, Nutella!), crackers, cheese, ham, salad, fruit salad.....

I think my stomach was still settling so I just went for cereal, although I had some bread with Nutella after which I thought I may have chosen the wrong bread perhaps...? #interesting  Outside we could see a number of people arriving by car, parking outside the hotel and the church opposite - and the church was their destination.  Some were dressed in traditional Bavarian costume, others dressed smartly for the Sunday service.  We realised that the more rural communities, especially of south Germany, are more religious than they are in the north, or at least more catholic, almost certainly in Bavaria. Outside the church there was an incredibly tall flag pole covered in blue and white stripes and shield shaped paintings.  As the waitress had been speaking to us in English, I thought I would ask her what she could tell me about the flag pole.  She said that each painting represents an important part of the village and its community, such as churches, schools and local trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, hunting, baking.  She told us that every 5 years they get a new flag pole, and also every village in Bavaria has one of these.


At breakfast I took advantage of the fact that we were the only two people in the room, and I swiped some crackers and Nutellas.   Also took a giant pretzel which was as big as my hand, and popped it in my bag for later. #nibbles  Back in our room, we prepared our bags as well as we could, as we knew the rain wasn't going to be letting up any time soon.  We decided on the Museum first, followed by the Schloss.


In the car, we travelled to a place called Vaterstetten where we got the train.  Even though we arrived in Vaterstetten in about half an hour, it took us another 20 minutes to find where the station was - and the car park which was next to it!  Not the best sign posted thing I have to say,  Mathew said that if he hadn't looked this up online before we came here, he wouldn't have actually known it was there at all.  We got to the station pretty quickly, at which point it was coming up to 10am.  We then decided that it might be a good idea to head straight to the Schloss.  It was the furthest from us, and it was the one thing out of the two on our list which we really wanted to visit, so that's where we headed.


It was a 15 minute walk away from the station after we arrived, and we walked around to Schloss Nymphenburg and had a good look at the multiple options of tickets which we could buy, deciding on the Palace and the garden.  I asked for the tickets in German, which the guy at the till was happy to continue speaking with me even though he knew I wasn't a native German speaker (his smile was saying "you can do it!").  Mathew put his rucksack in a locker (the guy explained all of this to us in German and we surprised ourselves by understanding him straight away) and we continued on to the palace rooms.  The palace itself is huge of course, but obviously they only open up part of it to the public.


The palace was the summer residence and seat of Bavaria's electors and kings - and also the birthplace of King Ludwig II.  We soon realised that we were going to be seeing King Ludwig II quite a bit on our holiday - purely coincidental!  The first room, The Great Hall........well.....very impressive indeed!  That alone was worth going there to see.  That alone was more impressive than the entire palace of Versailles.  I thought it slightly odd though, that the great hall was incredibly sumptuous and way over the top with all the paintings and gold leaf and chandeliers, whilst the side rooms were pretty basic and quite plain in comparison.  Admittedly there was very little in the way of furniture, but the walls which displayed a number of paintings were either covered in a simple silk "wall paper" like covering, or nothing at all.  A stark contract to The Great Hall which had practically everything ornate you could think of.  The Gallery of Beauties illustrated King Ludwig I's ideal of beauty rather than the social rank of the women in the portraits.  These paintings were in unbelievably good condition, as if they had been painted just yesterday.  I have no idea if they have been restored or not, but the colours were so bright, vivid and the detail was incredibly clear.


Outside, the park had a number of palaces or rather, pavilions.  There were four in total, but before we began our tour of these, we went outside and foud the cafe which was en route.  We were quickly seated and we chose to have some soup - Mathew had cream of asparagus, while I went with the beef broth.  As it turns out, mine at least was incredibly salty!  I started worrying about the amount of salt I might be consuming on this holiday.....!  And I'm sure we were supposed to have bread with the soup.  I wasn't convinced about my semolina dumplings though.....


Our waitress wished us a "nice day" before bursting out with laughter as we joined in, as it was still raining heavily outside.  I had only just started to feel it seeping into my shoes as we had arrived at the cafe.  We went outside and walked around, under the cover of the trees but the ground was sodden and full of puddles which we tried our best to avoid but really it would have been advisable to wear Wellies at this point.  We managed to visit the Magdalenenklause which encompassed a chapel and part of a grotto with the majority of the walls and ceilings in the Hall and the chapel decorated with shells.


We then made our way around to the Pagodenburg which was octagonal in plan, and had a Hall on the ground floor which was almost entirely covered in blue and white - not just paintings but porcelain tiles as well.  The upper floor had a couple of small rooms, which were very ornately painted in Chinese style, including a lot of lacquer work.  On the way down the stairs I noticed that the stair case was also completed covered (with the exception of the floor) in blue and white Chinese style decoration, including porcelain tiles on the majority of the walls, and painting on the ceiling.


After this, I discovered my feet were completely wet - not something I like to experience for a long period of time, I guess it like one of the most annoying things EVER for me.  Instead of continuing to the other two pavilions straight away, we made our way back to the Schloss and I changed into my crocs, taking my drenched socks off.  I was then I realised that my feet were aching quite a lot too, and although we had intended to look at the other two more ornate pavilions in the park (a similar style to that of The Great Hall in the Scloss going on the pictures) we thought it best to give up now and head to the Museum.  However, when we arrived at the train station, we thought it best to return to the hotel, especially at it was 15:00 by the time we left the Schloss and the Museum closed at 17:00.  Not a great deal of time for a museum of the size.   So we headed off back to the car and travelled back to the hotel following a diversion due to (we assumed) some local flooding, fortunately not in Obendorf though.  We returned to the hotel in one piece and cranked the radiator up to the highest level to dry our socks and shoes, and I used the hair dryer on them too.


Dinner was pretty straight forward as we had managed to translate the menu somewhat the night before.  This time I had pasta with parmesan, pesto and white asparagus, whilst. Mathew had roast pork.  Finally I had managed to choose something which was NOT salty!


After paying, we chilled out in the room, and thought about our journey onwards tomorrow.