Taking the good advice from the RS tour folks, we arrived early. We stayed at the The Hotel Blauer Bock in Munich. https://hotelblauerbock.de/ It was a beautiful corner room, third floor, spacious living area. We are so very blessed. We rested a bit at the hotel, then ready to find a place for some lunch. Just outside of the hotel there was a open square area with several outdoor cafes. The weather was great.
We went out to find the church and tower mentioned in the RS Munich book: Saint Peter’s. We walked around but couldn’t find the staircase. We walked completely around the church but couldn’t find the entrance to the tower. In the front of the church Julie asked an art vendor about the tower, and he responded “I am an artist. I don’t care about the church.” We started looking up at the church and it was “Heiliger Geist” with the help of Google translate, we realized this was not St. Peter’s but the church next door “Holy Spirit” church. Julie remember that there were a lot of doves pictured and outside dove sculptures.
A view of Munich from St. Peters
Best view in Munich – from tower at St. Peters (303 steps) St. Peter’s Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in the inner city of Munich, southern Germany. Its 91-metre tower is commonly known as “Alter Peter”—Old Pete—and is emblematic of Munich. St Peter’s is the oldest recorded parish church in Munich and presumably the originating point for the whole city.
Granted we were tired, but it was easy with the RS book, we found Saint Peter’s Church and went straight to the stairway. It was six euro for two senior citizens. It was a very narrow staircase with 306 narrow wooden steps. Many people going up and down. We had to wait sometimes on the stair turns for folks to pass. The view of old town Munich was great. There was somewhat poor visibility, basically the reality of smog in a big city. We took a bunch of pictures and came down.
Looking for a place to have coffee it started to rain slightly so we found an outside café with a tent cover so we had a slice of Bavarian chocolate cream pie. It was perfect tasting with coffee.
Delicious pie at an outdoor cafe outside of St. Peter’s in Munich
The malicious Covid plague hit shortly after our return from our Rick Steves Italy trip in late October 2019 and then the world shut down. It was all rather daunting. We had to make the decision to no longer travel, or to do all we can to prevent Covid and continue onward with travel adventures. Onward!
We got our two Moderna vaccines in March 2021 and a booster in December 2021. We flew for the first time since the end of October 2019 to Austin in March 2022. There we met our youngest grandchild. We have not caught Covid. We wear KN95 mask inside around other people. We are rather isolated in our tiny mountain village but for different reasons, others here have caught the virus.
On September 9, 2022, exactly four weeks before boarding our plane to Munich, we got our bivalent vaccine; which targets the highly contagious omicron variant of Covid. Though not required, we wore our mask on the planes.
Our Rick Steves tour has all travelers show proof of having gotten all Covid vaccines and a negative Covid test 24 hours or less before our first meeting. We all signed a pledge stating we would wear KN95 mask when inside together – except of course restaurants.
The two of us enjoy our first meal out on this trip – informal and interesting, eating outside is our favorite and Europe is filled with outdoor cafés – we are so lucky that English is the universal language. Most menus had both German and English and most people speak at least some English. Greeting locals in their language pleases them. We then ask if they speak English – all to say language was not a barrier when we are kind with each other.
Julie picked the spicy pizza and asked the waitress what drink would complement the food and indeed, taste buds are having a party!
Aperol Spritz is 3 parts proseco, 2 parts Aperol, I part sparkling water. Chill all bottles and combine
The flavors were having a party dancing with my taste buds
First meal in Munich, best spicy pizza
Lovely Salad at a cafe outside our hotel.
Bruce picked this salad and we shared the food after a blessing of thankfulness and using hand sanitizer
We eat and walk, eat and walk! We were really lucky with the weather for the entire trip with only the occasional drip of a raindrop – not even worthy of rain gear. Only our last day was rainy and that wasn’t dreadful – no wind, no cold, no downpours.
We walk to the Deutsches Museum. The 18 minute or so walk in the picturesque autumn day is a joy!
With a diverse collection of over 28,000 objects showcasing fifty different fields of science and technology, the Deutsches Museum is the largest museum of its kind in the world and the biggest museum in Munich.