Holiday in Munich and Innsbruck

After my Dad left on Sunday, May 25, we scurried around to get packed for our trip to Munich. Mid-morning on Monday, we drove to London Heathrow to catch our afternoon flight. The weather in England when we left on Monday was rainy, rainy, rainy...so when we arrived in Munich and it was mostly sunny and warm, we were very pleasantly surprised.

I let Mike drive the rental car when we first picked it up as it was a manual and I hadn't driven one of those in about 13 years. It was quite stressful when I first got behind the wheel on about Day 3 but thank heavens everything came back to me fairly quick. I enjoyed driving on the "American" side of the car and the "American" side of the road. Plus, it couldn't get any better driving 180 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn (with cars still passing us) listening to Nena's 99 Red Balloons on the radio (in German, of course). ;o)

In our current van, the kids are totally separated from each other (which I have now realized is a really good thing); however with the rental car, they were all seated right next to each other in the back seat. There were several times throughout the week when I asked if I was going to have to stop the car since they kept touching each other. ;o) It seemed the only quiet time during our drives was when they all fell asleep for an hour or so. Finally, we had a little bit of peace and quiet (mind you, this only happened one time at the end of the week).


Our hotel was The Alte Post hotel which is situated in the Alps of Oberammergau, Germany (about 1.5 hours south of Munich). The town was very quaint and the hotel fit us perfectly (two level apartment-type setting). Upon arriving at the hotel and trying to wind down, we put in the Travel Channel's DVD on Munich and Bavaria (to see exactly what we wanted to visit while we were on holiday) and saw that the host, Samantha Brown, stayed at the same hotel when she visited the area.


We walked around Oberammergau several different times attempting to take in all of the beautiful scenery. Almost every building is decorated with gorgeous art that seems to tell a story. Down the main road of the town, we walked past the Little Red Riding Hood house as well as the Hansel & Gretel house. The kids enjoyed talking through the stories with us while looking at the murals on the buildings. With all 3 kids taking in the sights of the town with us, they easily spotted a gelato shop which was about 1 block from our hotel -- so, of course, we ended up visiting it for gelato every night of our trip.

(Little Red Riding Hood house)

(Hansel & Gretel house)

(Enjoying a "pinocchio" gelato on our last night in Oberammergau)

The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site was our first actual place to tour. The camp was the first one created in Germany during the Nazi rule and was one of the last ones still being used at the end of their rule (1933-1945). It served as the model for other Nazi concentration camps. During its twelve years in existence, there were 200,000 prisoners from over 30 countries. With the girls only being 3.5, they obviously didn't understand what had occurred at the location; however Brett did understand and was asking a ton of questions. Attempting to explain to him the horrific things the prisoners had to endure was heartbreaking and almost uncomprehendable. It was a very sobering experience to say the least.


The next place we visited was Neuschwanstein Castle. King Ludwig II built the castle in hopes that he would one day live there and have his own retreat; however he passed away in 1886 while it was still being built. The castle, itself, was the inspiration for the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty castles at Disney. We took a carriage ride up the steep hill to reach the castle. Following our tour of the castle, we hiked to a nearby rope bridge to get a birds-eye view of the castle. With me being scared of heights and water, this location obviously wasn't my favourite location -- as you can tell in the photo as I have a deathgrip on all 3 kids. ;o)


On Wednesday, we visited Swarovski Crystal World near Munich. We enjoyed taking a tour of the building to see everything on display -- although I would have really like to have brought a few "crystals" back home with me. After the tour, we let the kids play for a bit on the rope swing and jungle gym. As it seems with all of our trips, we always run into a group of people who find our kids extremely interesting with their blonde hair and blue eyes. Of course, once they also notice the "twin" thing, they are drawn to them even more. Just thought I would share a few photos so everyone could see what we experience on a fairly frequent basis. ;o)


The Olympic Park (Olympiapark) was the next stop on the agenda. This stadium located at the heart of the Olympic Park was the main venue for the 1972 Summer Olympics.


While we were in the general area, we decided to also visit downtown Munich on that day. While my handy companion "Jane" (fabulous GPS system) seemed to have us walk about a mile more than what we needed to in order to get to the Marienplatz in the center of the city, it ended up just perfectly as the Rathaus-Glockenspiel began playing music and the figurines began moving and dancing around just as we arrived at 5 p.m. The figurines are reinacting two different stories from the 16th century. The top half of the Glockenspiel tells the story of the marriage of the local Duke Wilhelm V to Renata of Lothringen and the bottom half tells about the Schäfflerstanz (the coopers' dance). There was a time in the 16th century when the plague hit the town and everyone went into hiding. The first people to dare go back onto the streets were barrel makers who performed a big dance to show that it was okay to come out again. While music plays every hour, the figures only move 3 times a day so it was perfect luck that we caught it just in time. ;o)


On Thursday, we visited Innsbruck, Austria. While there, we toured Ambras Castle (Schloss Ambras) and also visited the center of the city where the Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl) is located. The Golden Roof is a landmark in Innsbruck that was built in 1500. It is decorated with 2,657 copper tiles for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.


On our last full day in the Munich area, we decided to visit Linderhof Castle (Schloss Linderhof). The castle is the smallest of the three palaces built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and is the only one that he lived to see completed. After taking the tour of the castle and realizing we still had several hours before dinner, we decided to go to the Tegelbergbahn (alpine slide) near Neuschwanstein Castle. Since Mike and I were pretty sure we had exhausted the kids visiting so many castles, etc. over the week, we let them play here for quite a while. Brett loved flying down the slide (on his own since he was old enough); Kendall was a bit hesitant at first but ended up finally liking the slide; and Kameron kept telling me "keep your hands off the brake, mommy!" ;o)


Saturday was our last day in Munich and since we didn't have to be at the airport until around 7 p.m., we decided to eat lunch at the Hofbrauhaus and then visit the Hellabrunn Zoo. The Hofbrauhaus has a great German atmosphere and we all enjoyed watching the waiters/waitresses carry up to 10 huge mugs of beer at a time. I don't think I could have carried 3 at a time so I'm not honestly sure how these people did it -- but it was really neat to see. Our final stop before the airport was the Hellabrunn Zoo. This zoo is one of the largest in Europe. The kids enjoyed seeing all of the animals but their favourite was the monkeys (go figure!).

(FYI -- As happy as he looks, Brett didn't drink any of this beer...) ;o)

While we can't speak German (or French, or Italian, or Spanish, etc. for that matter) we found it relatively easy to get around. Everyone we ran into was extremely helpful. Our only real frustration was not being able to read street signs very well. While on the trip, the kids have now come up with a favourite word ... Ausfahrt (which means 'exit' but sounds extremely funny to them).