Ooompah!

Off to Venice’s Marco Polo airport early this morning to get our daughter off on her flight home and our flight back to Munich where we began this journey.  In Munich we are staying at he  Kempinski Hotel Airport to make sure we have a relaxed, no pressure exit for our flight home in the morning.

Once we landed, we dropped off our luggage and, since we are now experts at the European train system, we hopped on the S-8 Bahn into the center of town.  We spent about an hour riding around (in the open-air second level) one of the Hop-On buses to show Mom the sights. Munich is pretty torn up at the moment, many of the historical buildings are being renovated and the subway system is being enhanced. It was actually hard for the bus to get around a few spots. Apparently this work is in support of the city’s bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

We ended up in the Old Town at the Marienplatz, walked around a bit and then over to the Hofbräuhaus for an early dinner. As expected, the place was packed, the music was good and the mix of locals in costumes and Saturday evening tourist-crowd was a sight to see. We stayed inside, since the smokers were out in force in the garden portion of the restaurant. It was fun and we had a very satisfying, if totally unhealthy and excessive, meal.

A prominent slogan above the oompah band at the Hofbräuhaus translates to: “Thirst is worse than homesickness.”  At this point I can safely say, our thirst is quenched and we are all ready to get back home.