Today we hit our travelling groove. We caught the first hop on hop off bus of the day and headed to our first destination:The English Gardens.
This is a vast area of parklands covering some 900 acres of paths, brooks and grassed and wooded areas. Jeanette had a hankering to see the Chinese Tower that she had read was somewhere in the park.
Unfortunately the park signposting was fairly non existent and what there was was in German, as you would expect, and of no great assistance to us, but we knew it was in the middle of the park somewhere and we worked on the theory that we would follow the biggest path we could find and see where that took us.
So off we went and a short way in we struck the fastest flowing river we both had ever seen. The water was absolutely rocketing along .
Then over a couple of bridges we found a really large thoroughfare and followed that and after about half a K we found the Chinese tower.
The structure itself is pretty ho hum but the amazing sight was the sea of green tables and bench seats tightly packed together that surrounded it. Four workers were busily employed using long poles with squeegees on the ends to mop the overnight rainwater off the seats and table tops. This spot turns out to be an outdoor beer garden that can seat 7000 people.
We retraced our way back out of the park, picked up the hop on hop off bus for our next destination, the Deutsches Museum. This vast complex is their technological museum. It has a fascinating collection of a huge range of mechanical stuff from full size early pumping engines, a large steam tug with the side cut out so you can see the engine and boiler, examples of machine shops through the ages, through to bits of airships and Von Richthofen’s red Fockker triplane.
It even had an example of the interrupter mechanism fitted to a machine gun that enabled the gun on the Fokker to shoot through the propellor arc without hitting the prop. This was a real museum with lots of real historical stuff on display. It was a refreshing change from the dumbed down, photo displays and pap that so called museums in the UK and Aus dish up these days.
Back on the hop on hop off bus we headed down to the Marienplatz which was a sea of people. Looking up, Jeanette spotted a restaurant on the first floor of a building opposite the very exotic old town hall and we decided to have lunch. This venue was an absolute goldmine with tables packed with people . As soon as a table near the windows finished, a nearby table of people would relocate to it to improve their view. This tended to be a bit confusing for the waitresses bringing the orders. This was the view from our table.
After lunch we had a look in the Frauenkirche Cathedral. Built in the 15th century, its twin onion domed towers are a symbol of the city and an old law still exists that no other building can be constructed higher than it. While it is a Catholic Church, its interior is very plain and austere.
We decided to walk back from there to our hotel using the iphone’s directions. After a ropey start that had us walking in circles for a bit we eventually got on the right path and made it back to the hotel.
Hardys’ Travels 