A Very Busy Day

Sunday September 12th

We awoke to another bright sunny day today and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast outside. Today we wanted to visit the Residenz. This was the palace complex of the Whittelsbach dynasty up till 1918 when the Monarchy ceased. The buildings date back to 1385. Although some of the original buildings exist in their original form, there was extensive damage to the whole complex in WW2 and a lot of it has been reconstructed in the original style. This is something that the Germans have done with their heritage buildings all over Germany. It is a credit to them. No expense has been spared and they have gone to great trouble to faithfully reconstruct their heritage. They also keep their buildings looking fresh and well painted and there is scaffolding everywhere as they always seem to working on maintenance.


A thorough exploration of this palace would take several days if not weeks, but we bought the triple ticket which included the Treasury, the State Apartments and the Baroque Theatre. The Treasury audio guide warned that if you listened to all the commentaries it would take 5 hours! So we had to be selective. One of the most beautiful pieces was the English crown taken to Germany by one of the daughters of Henry lV.
There was also an amazing figure of St George killing the dragon made in1597 and heavily encrusted with jewels. It was one of the best treasuries we had visited and took a while to view but not 5 hours.

The next tour was the Residenz Museum. This also had a very comprehensive audio guide and we had to be really selective here. There were over 90 rooms and if we had listened to it all we would have missed the boat back to England next week! There was room after room of mind blowing opulence. There are more rooms open in the afternoon than in the morning and by now it was the afternoon so we did the long tour. There were too many highlights to mention.
By the time we had finished going up and down stairs and along corridors it was 2.30 and we still hadn’t had lunch in fact we were over being hungry. We sat in one of the quiet courtyards and had our lunch and then went to the Cuvillies theatre. Destroyed in WW2 the theatre was rebuilt using as much of the surviving wood carvings as possible. It is described as Europe’s finest surviving Rococo theatre and was originally built around 1735.

A short walk away was the Theatinerkirche which is a must see and one of Munich’s finest buildings. It is pure Roman Baroque and the interior is all white stuccowork which is a change from the high baroque rococo style of many of the other churches.

It was time for coffee and internet and they spied a San Francisco Coffee Company right by the church so went in and found a comfortable couch. I caught up on Blog and email and the Wanganui news. Here I was surprised to read that St Georges School was closing at the end of the year. Alan finally got to read his expensive Guardian that he had bought to read the day before whole Mary was on the internet.
We had seen all we wanted to see but decided it was a bit early to go back to the camp so we took a walk around the Hofgarten and then took the Ubahn to Sendlinger Tor. Here we caught a tram just to have a nice long tram ride in another direction. It was through a completely different part of town and was a restful way to finish the day. We jumped off and caught one going back the other way and then headed back to camp. To our surprise a tent city had popped up during our absence.

We took a walk around the whole and realised how huge it is. We are in the part near the entrance so had no idea how big it all was. At least three big bus tours including Bus About and Contiki had arrived and pitched all their tents. The place is full of young people all speaking English. We have kiwis on both sides of us here. There is another young couple in a really small van and they have been on the road for 6 months but are getting sick of it and think they will try and get jobs in Germany after the Oktoberfest. Although it doesn’t officially start until Friday, it is already very festive in town and people are dressing up already in their festive clothes. We wonder if the bus tours are staying on through for the Oktoberfest.