Munich - June 13-15

We left home at noon on Monday.  Our red-eye to London left at 4:30 PM.  Whoever said that taking a red-eye with kids was the best thing to do, doesn't have our kids.  It was a pretty crazy trip.  I know that I didn't get any sleep between Chicago and London, and perhaps no one did.  (Actually The Little One and Woof-woof got some, but not much.)  After a three hour layover in London(where Sweetie finally slept a bit, but doesn't remember it), we hopped on another plane to Munich.  It was a short trip and we were glad to be done with flying.  I think that we each averaged about 1 1/2 hours of sleep and given that The Little One slept for about four hours you get an idea of how tired we were...

The kids didn't have much energy for anything in Munich, so we pushed them on the luggage carts through the airport.  

 After we got checked into our hotel and gave the Little One a bath(because she threw-up on the car ride) we went on a walk.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed to the English Gardens.  It's a big beautiful park.  It was just what we needed.  The kids threw rocks and sticks into this river.  We explored the park a little more until rain stopped us.  When it started raining we quickly walked back to our hotel and got everyone to bed.

 We made it through the night!  The Little One woke up after a two hour nap and was ready to play, but after I let her play for a couple of hours(while dozing) we finally gave her some benedryl and she was out for the night.  The kids woke up at some point(I don't remember this) but after a quick bathroom break they both went to bed easily(or so I'm told).  The next thing I remember is The Guy waking me up at 9:30 and asking me if I thought we should wake the kids up to get breakfast before the hotel breakfast closed for the day.  We all slept for almost fifteen hours straight!  It was much needed.

After breakfast we headed back to the English Gardens to spend the day.  We started at the lake where we went on a pedal boat ride.

  

Sweetie needs some steering skills.  (I'm sure he'll learn fast when he starts really driving.)

 Woof-woof had fun riding.

 The Guy was good at guiding the drivers.

 The Little One became a good duck spotter.  It was fun to teach her to say, "quack".  She picked up quickly(she learned later in the day to say, "woof" too.)

We discovered a funny fear of mine - Geese while riding on a pedal boat.  I was so afraid that the geese were going to come up close to us and bite us.  It was pretty funny when I took a serious look at how I was acting while the kids were driving.

 The Little One and I were a bit squished while driving, but we were good at it!  And I kept clear of the geese.

 Woof-woof driving(she needs steering skills too).

 After we finished the pedal boat, we wandered around the park some more.  The first place we saw was a beer garden(biergarten).  They are pretty much an open air cafe(not bar) and they are extremely family friendly.  Every one that I saw today(and there were a lot) had a playground for kids.  We stopped and grabbed some juice and a pretzel at our first one.  

The Little One loved riding on this springy horse thing.

 After our snack and play time we continued on our walk.  We had lunch near the Chinese tower at another biergarten.  Since we're in Germany we had to try bratwurst.  It was good.  Then the kids played at the play area for a while where we found this lady bug.  Woof-woof was delighted by it(The Little One just tried to eat it.)

 Speaking of eating things, The Little One is in that stage where everything goes in her mouth.  Every time we set her on the ground we have to do this a few seconds later to get her to spit out the rocks.  It might be a long trip...

 A little while later on our walk(after Woof-woof got hit by a bicycle - she wasn't watching and ran across the trail when a bike was passing us) we came across this lovely river.  The amazing thing to me about this river is that apparently none of it is original.  When they made these gardens years ago(in 1789) they decided to divert some of the Isar river(to help with flooding) into the gardens.  This waterfall is picture perfect, as I suppose it should be since it's man made.

 We continued our way through the gardens.  Then we crossed under a road and found ourselves at the Munich Residence(the "working" palace for the Bavarian monarchs).  We only walked through the garden.  Sweetie was quite incredulous when I told him that this temple was built in 1615.  Hopefully tomorrow we'll make it into the palace.

 The Guy and I knew that we had pushed the kids pretty hard, so we decided to walk back to our hotel.  While walking up the strabe(street) we were playing games with the kids to keep their minds off the walk(they'd been going for five-plus hours) and we found this statue.  It's a shame it's hidden behind these trees because it's pretty amazingly tall(The Guy doesn't even hardly reach the top of the foot).

We got back to our hotel(actually an apartment), ate a quick dinner of bread, fruit, and cheese(sorry, you have to hear about our food - this is part journal), and got the kids to bed.  What a great first couple of days!