(Monday, Sept. 14) The clouds that piled up in the sky late Sunday afternoon turned out to carry rain for Tuesday in Munich. But the rain held off during our walk to breakfast and our morning stroll down to the central city’s big open-air food emporium, the Viktualienmarkt. This is an American “farmer’s market” on steroids, and it is open every day except Sunday. You can buy fresh produce, olive oil, pasta, fish (“If It Swims We Cook It” read the fish-monger’s sign), fresh-squeezed fruit juice, Austrian specialties, chocolates, dried fruit, and all manner of arts and crafts goods. Even though a light rain hard started to fall, the market was bustling with shoppers¸ some standing up under the sheltering eaves of the food vendors’ shops to eat their lunch.
We left the market and wandered up the street to St. Peter’s Church (which looks to me to be a “knock-off” of the Salzburg cathedral) and then to the “Heiliggeistkirche” (Holy Ghost Church) whose main section could only be viewed before the 4 pm opening from behind a wrought iron gate separating the entry from the sanctuary.
After two-weeks of lunching on heavy foods, we turned on my iPhone , typed “Starbucks, Munich” into the Google Map program, and got turn-by-turn walking directions to one of the chain’s coffee shops in Munich. Afterwards, we walked across the street to Munich’s most famous beer hall, the Hofbrau Haus, run by the royal family (you had to know someone who knew someone or you had to be someone to get in way back when) and now by the State of Bavaria (which knows this is its “Fisherman’s Wharf”). It’s about as big as a blimp hangar inside, but all was quiet as the main dining room wasn’t going to be open until dinner. We toured the interesting historical exhibits on the mezzanine about the stage where the oompah-band would play that night, then left with no intention of returning to dine.
Our next stop was the Wittlebach royal family’s main abode in Munich, known as The Residenz. We took a quick tour of their theater, a sort of mini-version of the Vienna Opera House, and then went through the palace proper. After going through about half of the 90 rooms listening to the audio guide (whose narrators must have told us at least fifty times that what we were seeing was, at least in part, a replica or replacement for the original art, architecture, or furnishings, since much of the palace lay in ruins after the end of WW II), we beat a hasty retreat to the konditorei across the street for a bit of pastry to keep us going until dinner.
