Europe 2019 - Munich

We arrived in Munich on Wednesday night, June 19th. This was my second time in Munich - Kyle and I were there in 2005 when we did our 3 week Europe trip. Munich didn't really stand out to me from the 2005 trip, but this time I loved Munich. The food scene was excellent, there is a large park in the middle of Munich, and I enjoyed the city feel. (I think it reminded me of NYC and that is why I liked it so much.)

Thursday morning was breakfast at LAX Eatery. It had a Southern California beach feel - hence the name.

This Thursday was a holiday called Corpus Christi so everyone was out having brunch.

The cathedral in Marienplatz. Since it was Corpus Christi it had Vatican flags flying (usually those flags cannot be flown outside of Vatican City).

I walked to Wagners Juicery for a smoothie on Thursday afternoon.

The place was packed and the smoothie was just ok.

Thursday afternoon we had signed up to do a bike tour around the city. We met for the tour, and shortly thereafter it started pouring. When the rain really hit, we were in Hofbräuhaus so we went upstairs to this room. This is the room where Hitler started the Nazi Party.

This is our tour guide James (from Australia). He did a great job of entertaining us during the rain and then as soon as the rain stopped he got us out on the bikes.

This was a palace that was damaged during WWII - rather than completely fixing it, they just drew some of the lines to make it look like bricks. They even drew some of the windows.

This was interesting to me about the lions. If you zoom in on the picture, you see the lion on the right has his mouth closed and the lion on the left has his mouth open. The lion on the right is facing a church, while the lion on the left is facing a government building. The lion on the right has his mouth closed because you cannot question the authority of God but you can question the authority of government hence the mouth open.

This is the English Garden - such a gorgeous park. And you don't even feel like you are in a city here.

There was also surfing in Munich!?!?!

James the tour guide said this was a popular restaurant so we ate there on Thursday night.

Kyle and I also ate here in 2005.

Friday morning we got up early and went for a walk in the English Garden. So pretty seeing the sun shine through the trees.

Munich in the background from the park - another thing I learned on the tour was the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was filmed in Munich.

Mary's Coffee Club was another restaurant I found that did not disappoint. 

This was probably the best breakfast of the trip.

Friday we started at the BMW Museum.

This was the first BMW car.

328i signage.

1936 BMW 328 - looks a bit different than my 328.

A rainbow as we were leaving the museum.

After the museum, we went to BMW drifting class. This was Dave's favorite part of the trip.

I actually had fun - had never drifted before in my life. It is more difficult than it looks - I did a lot of spinning.

We passed the class and got our certificates.

Saturday morning was breakfast at Bar-Centrale. Their vanilla creme croissants were probably the best I have ever had. I can still taste it now :)

While we were sitting there a film crew came in and filmed a guy standing at the bar and drinking an espresso. Turns out it was David Beckham's son (that is what our waiter told us and when we Googled him he looked similar).

This was our Airbnb in Munich - we were on the first floor (i.e. up one flight of stairs).

We left Munch Saturday morning and drove to Salzburg. Munich is a place I would definitely visit again!

Europe 2019 - Frankfurt and Stuttgart

Our Europe trip 2019 started out on Monday night, June 17th, at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. We had a direct flight from Phoenix to Frankfurt on Condor Airlines. 

This was taken from the Airtrain - both the international planes getting prepped for the overnight flights across the Atlantic.

My first flight with Condor.

We left Phoenix at about 9pm local time and landed in Frankfurt at about 5pm local time. With a nine hour time change, that equals about an 11-hour flight.

Other than landing and renting the car, we did not spend any time in Frankfurt. Once we got the rental car, Dave had fun driving for the first time on the Autobahn and we headed to Stuttgart. With jet lag, we were up early on Wednesday morning. We took a walk to find some coffee shops that I had researched before leaving Phoenix, but neither of them were open (and didn't open until too late in the morning for our schedule for the day).

Mercedes-Benz HQ are in Stuttgart (hence the reason this city was on our itinerary) and the Mercedes logo was flying high above the city.

Our Airbnb building in Stuttgart - this was a short one-night stay.

Our first stop was the Mercedes-Benz museum. This (as well as the next picture) was one of the first motorized vehicles.

This was Princess Diana's 1991 500 SL. She was the first member of the British royal family to drive a foreign car, and gave it back in 1992 due to criticism from the government, trade unions and industry.

I took this picture for my mom - this was the engine in Al Unser, Jr.'s Indy Car for the 1994 Indy 500 that he won.

The outside of the museum - it was actually a pretty cool design.

The Mercedes campus.

We finished with the museum and walked these streets to find lunch.

Our next stop after lunch was the Porsche factory tour and museum (their HQ is also in Stuttgart). They had Porsches flying high in the roundabout which was surrounded by their campus.

There were no cameras allowed in the factory, but the neatest thing were all the ATVs driving around. They were carrying supplies (some even carried engines) to the various stations and there was no one actually driving these vehicles. We then went to the museum - Dave really wanted to bring home a car :)

We finished at Porsche and then were on the road to Munich.