Thursday 10th August: Weather: 14°C to 23°C: Beautiful sunny day.
Munich: 20.0k walk: 6hrs 30mins: 9.00am to 3.30pm: 2 x 30 min stops: Flat
Accommodation: Euro Youth Hotel Munich
Eisbach wave at English Garten
Coffe by lake English Garten
Monopteros English Garten
Monopteros English Garten
Monopteros in Enlish Garten
Pork Knuckle at Viktualienmarkt
Highlight today was the English Garten - again - and watching the wave riders on the Isar River, then discovering the Monopteros. Next best thing was finishing the day at the Viktualienmarkyt Beer Garten with a beer, pork knuckle and sauerkraut.
We’re both awake at 4am. Not surprising since we were asleep at 9pm last night. An early morning cup of tea followed by hours of activating the Aldi Talk SIM card. The problem was the on-line form which was all in German with no English selection in the menu, and every sentence had to be copied into Google Translation. Eventually, we succeeded and expected an instant result. No such luck and many forums suggested it might take a few days. We’ll see.
After breakfast of Meusli and yoghurt, we’re packed and out the door by 9am, heading for the English Garten. First up was the wave riders who never fail to amuse with their surfing antics on the half metre high wave created when the Eisbach river emerges from underground and crosses a stone step. It has been attracting surfers and onlookers from around the world for 40 years. A few hundred metres on, and we see a nice spot beside a lake for a cup of coffee with the ducks.
A long stroll to the end of the English Garten in beautiful sunshine then returning via a different path - which isn’t hard to do - to the lake and the Monopteros tower which we’d missed on previous trips, with wonderul views over the English Garten across to the Munich skyline of church steeples. Timefor another break, this time a cup of tea with a few spicy fruit rolls.
We arrive back in Munich at 3.30pm after almost 20k around the English Garten, and stop at the Hauptbahnhof to buy tickets for the 7.34am train in the morning to Dobbiacco on the way to Cortina. The sign says we need ID and our passports are back in the room. Lucky our Euro Youth Hotel is only 300 metres away, but when we return, the queue is twice as long. An hour later and we have 2 x tickets to Dobbiaco, which requires several changes from train to bus to train because there’s track work being carried out in Austria just south of Innsbruck.
Back to our room to re-organise and pack ready for an early start in the morning. A quick shower and at 5.30pm we’re off to the Viktualienmarkt Beer Garden. It’s packed, but people are always willing to move along teh bench seats to make room. Tonight we shared a pork knuckle, with sauerkraut and raw cabbage, washed down with a pale ale and a dunkel beer.
A slow stroll back through the busy Marienplatz, up the Kaufinger Strasse to Karlsplatz then along Bayern Strass to our hotel. Time for a bit more packing, a cup of tea and early to bed ready for a 7 hr train/bus trip tomorrow to Cortina.