Today will be our 3rd and final night at the Hotel Monaco, and it has been an amazing experience. Munich is the midpoint of our trip from California through Greece, Venice, and Germany. We are grateful to be here, since we were far from certain that we would even be able to get to Europe. Airport closures due to volcanic ash left us in a state of uncertainty for almost a week.
We checked the news and weather reports daily and were increasingly pessimistic about the odds of our flight being able to leave San Francisco. However, two days before our departure, everything cleared up and we arrived 30 minutes ahead of schedule. After a day in Venice and a week onboard a cruise ship through the Greek islands, we began the German portion of our trip, arriving at the Munich train station on Saturday night.
We were thankful to find the Hotel Monaco just a 5 minute walk away. After settling in, we immediately headed out to find a good place for dinner. Our initial thought was to find a cafe or restaurant near Marienplatz. This would have been a fine idea almost any other day than May 1, since the entire area was swarming with soccer fans, and many restaurants were filled to capacity. After trying three different places, we ended up at Ratskellar, and enjoyed a fine meal there, including some excellent apple strudel with ice cream. Yummy!
We headed back to Hotel Monaco for a good night’s sleep (though it was a little noisy out there!) and a delicious breakfast in the morning.
After examining the weather report, we decided that Sunday would not be a good day to see Munich, so we headed back to the train station bound for Salzburg. We visited the Mozart museum, then took the Sound of Music tour to learn the REAL story of the family von Trapp, then headed back to Munich.
Today we again deferred our visit to the sites of Munich to take a tour of the Linderhoff and Neuschwanstein castles. Since we had limited time and wanted to see both castles, we took the Grayline tour. This tour got off to a rocky start because they apparently oversold it and some people who had tickets were turned away.
We were among the lucky ones who knew that we needed to be there at 8 a.m., and we snagged the last couple of seats on the top level, and had wonderful views of all the sites. Our tour guide, Monica, was excellent, and had the perfect balance of providing helpful information to help everyone get the most out of our trip.
We are leaving tomorrow night, so we will have just one day to see what Munich itself has to offer. Our plan is to have one final breakfast here at the hotel, then head to the shops on Marienplatz, leaving in time to see the Glockenschpiel display at 11 a.m. Then lunch at the Viktualienmarkt, a stop at the Deutsches Museum, and then dinner at Hofbrauhaus before getting on the night train for Berlin.
Monaco Hotel München: