different names for the same thing

Thursday was supposed to be our last rainy day of the trip, so we decided to go to the Nymphenburg Palace. I convinced to Dave to go on a quick run through the park with me. It was so great to have someone with me and the park is so pretty, even on a cloudy day.
After we got back and showered, we got some laundry and dishes done. Laundry is crazy because we can only do one small load at a time. Also, we cannot run the dryer or the dishwasher at the same time the washer is going or it will blow a fuse. And, it is not advisable to try and take a shower while the dishwasher or washing machine are running or you will end up freezing. So, it’s showers, then laundry, then start the dishwasher as we’re walking out the door. It’s tricky, but we’re figuring it out. We will all appreciate when our clothes are soft again from the dryer rather than crunchy and wrinkly from being hung on chairs.
While I was finishing the housework, Dave and Dill went to the Biergarten to buy Dillon’s souvenir of a ginormous beer mug. I don’t know when he’ll ever need that much beverage at one sitting, but he really wanted one.
Knowing that if we head in to a museum or castle with hungry kids they won’t last, we went down to the Viktualienmarkt (lovingly called the “virtual market” by the Hansen family) to have some lunch. The kids love the chicken and chips, but I longed for something not fried. I found a shop with quiche and sundried tomatoes – yeah!
We trammed over to Nymphenburg (nymph’s castle) which was surprisingly close. It was so grand as we approached it. We toured the open rooms in the castle. I loved the queen’s apartments, especially the royal bed. The walls and ceilings of the halls were painted beautifully. In one of the rooms, two women were restoring a large painting. We really enjoyed watching them. The whole restoration process is very intriguing to me.
I also loved the “Gallery of Beauties” in the castle. King Ludwig I commissioned a painter to paint portraits of 36 of the city’s most beautiful women. The women were from all classes of society. One of the most notable was Lola Montez, a “spanish” dancer that was the king’s lover and the cause of the revolution in 1848. They were all beautiful!
After the castle, we walked over to the Marstallmuseum. This is the museum where all of the royal coaches, carriages and sleighs are on display. WOW!! These were so incredibly gorgeous. As a girl who loved all things Cinderella as a child, this was like a fairytale museum for me. They were all so magically beautiful. I really enjoyed walking through and trying to imagine actually riding in one of them. There was a really cool painting in the museum that portrayed one of the sleighs being ridden in the snow at night – very cool.
Enough of my princess fantasies. We walked down to Amalienburg. The walk itself was really nice. Much more “natural” than the extremely well-manicured grounds of Versailles, but still so pretty.
Amalienburg is a small palace/hunting lodge that Elector Karl Albrecht had built for his wife, Maria Amalia. Though small, this was one of the most beautiful things I have seen. Each room was uniquely designed. My favorite room is the large hall of mirrors in the center. It is all done in silver and blue – my favorite royal color combination. There was also a cabinet room done the same colors. My other favorite was the bedroom. This room was lemon yellow with silver and then a blue and silver ceiling. I absolutely loved it! I would be perfectly satisfied if this were my palace. No need for the giant Nymphenburg. :)
The kids started losing interested, so we walked back up through the beautiful gardens and pathways to the main castle.
We gave the kids the keys, a phone, and some money and let them go home on their own. They did great and even stopped in for some ice cream on the way. Dave and I went and did a little bit of shopping/errand running. We are trying to spend as much time together as we can since our time here is coming to an end and real life means Dave is gone for most of the day.
When we returned, Dave and Dillon went to a new Doner Kabob spot and picked up kabobs and raspberries for dinner. They have both been great about taking care of us ladies this trip! We had a fun family dinner together. After dinner, Dave and I went out for a walk and put the kids to bed.
Another good day. We are going to miss this life!

The fam waiting for the tram

Arriving at the Nymphenburg castle

T
he swans of the castle. The swan was King Ludwig II’s favorite animal.

Inside the great hall of the Palace

The Queen’s Bed

The magical carriages

One of the royal sleighs – this one is for a young prince

More royal sleighs

The painting of the sleigh at night

The royal merry-go-round

Cosa Rara and Ralf

Amalienburg

The bedroom

The Kitchen

The Grand Hall
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Some of the ceiling detail

The grounds behind the castle

My favorite people

The last few double teams have helped us catch up with the blog, so we’re sticking with it. Down side is you get me (Dave) for half of the entries now. I get to cover Wednesday, August 18th.
Today was a highlight for me. We went to the castle Neuschwanstein. This is what Walt Disney used as a model for Cinderella’s castle, and it definitely looks like it. For me it had a WOW factor when driving up to it similar to Mont St-Michel in France. Wendy is more of a France fan, so she’s sticking with St-Michel as #1 in wow.
Originally we were going to train down, but that got to be a bit complicated, so we opted to rent a car. One plus (even though it costs a little bit more) is renting from the train stations because they’re close and the rental places open early and stay open late. So, we got up early and headed over to the Munich central train station to get the car.
Everyone was excited because the Avis web page said ‘Mercedes (or equivalent)’. Driving a Mercedes on the German autobahn sounded fun. When we picked up our car it was a Chevy. Nothing personal to you American car fans, but I don’t know how a Mercedes is equivalent to a Chevy. To its defense, it was a good car. It was a diesel, which is good because that’s way cheaper here (gas is about 1.30 to 1.40 euro per liter and diesel is 1.12 to 1.20 per liter – both are crazy expensive compared to the US). I’d never seen that model, either. The kids were disappointed, but it was roomier in the back than our last rental, so they were ok with it.
Driving down was not too eventful. Our GPS was a bit out of date, so it told us to take the second exit on a roundabout that took us the wrong way. We’re driving at about 130km/h on a freeway and the GPS tells us to turn right or left at every small road (that isn’t an exit off the freeway). That didn’t inspire much confidence. After being lost for a bit, we finally found our way back to the right track.
I read that you need to order your tickets to the castle online before you go, and that is more true here than any other place I’ve been in Europe. You have to pay about 2 euro extra per ticket, but it is well worth it. We arrived in the small town that is mostly parking lots, restaurants and the ticket house. There was a massive line to the ticket house. We figured it was at least two hours long. We got to cut to the front because we ordered online and only waited about 10 min. The tickets they were selling were for tours starting 4 hours later, and the place closes around 6 (we were there around noon) so a good chunk of that line wasn’t seeing the castle that day.
They ask you to pick up your tickets an hour early because of the hike uphill to the castle. You can go by bus, horse drawn carriage, or hike. I’ll give you one guess which option (much to Mali’s disappointment) the cheapskate father picked. I wanted it not only because I’m cheap, but I love hiking, and this is a beautiful wooded area. I really enjoyed the walk up, and for all the guidebook warnings, it wasn’t that bad of a hike (but we took the slightly longer and less steep path).
We got up to the top with plenty of time to enjoy the view before the tour started. We walked around part of the outside of the castle and some of the courtyard. Finally our number got called. You go in with groups about 40 on a set guided tour. I think some of the people in our group were really tired of lines, because when the queue formed to get in, people were cutting in front of us (which is silly since we’re all going together).
On a sidebar, lines have been an interesting cultural thing on this trip. In Spain and France, there is less respect for your place in line. If you’re not paying super close attention (or even if you are) cutting isn’t a sin as much as a ‘finders/keepers’ kind of thing. Germany they are more respectful of lines (London seemed that way too). Interesting how different people treat things like that differently.
On the tour they take you through the finished rooms. It only got about 1/3 completed. King Ludwig the Second was spending a lot of money, so the puppet masters had him declared insane and taken from power. About a week later, he and his doctor were taking a walk by the lake and they both ended up dead (drown in about 3 feet of water). There’s a lot of mystery around his death. All work stopped immediately on the castle once he died. It was then open to the public for tours 6 weeks later.
Our tour guide was ‘interesting.’ He was a very thin, young man with a huge smile and a thick accent. Imagine a high school German über-nerd. Really nice kid, but his mannerisms, voice, and accent had Wendy and me on the verge of the giggles more than a few times.
The inside was amazing. We started with the servants quarters, and they were dang impressive. They had running water and toilets (which was quite advanced for the time).
A few more interesting facts that Wendy noted from our guide:

Ludwig II only spent 172 days in this castle.
He was a major patron of Wager. The decorations inside depict themes and secens from his operas (and parts of the castle inspired Wager as well). Ludwig wanted this to be a place where the operas could be performed (and they are for a few weeks in September. The hall is amazing).
In the throne room, the chandelier is made to look like a byzantine crown and weighs over 2,000 pounds. There are 2 million individual stones in the floor.
His bed took 14 wood carvers 4 years to carve. It shows.
Swans were Ludwig’s favorite animals. There are several painted and some stunning statues throughout the castle.
There was a telephone installed which was fairly state of the art for 1884.

I give you this list with no pictures because you can’t take pictures of the inside of the castle. I almost got us in trouble. I was taking pictures out the window of the outside (which is ok). I turned around to listen to the guide and realized the camera was still on. I hit a button (which I thought was the power) and got the picture button which triggered a flash. I looked around with everyone else with an expression of ‘who did that?’
Anyway, for me the inside was my favorite. I’ve seen a lot of palaces on this trip, and I was afraid of burn out, but every room made me go ‘wow.’ I’m glad we went in. It’s short because most of the castle isn’t done, and I probably wouldn’t feel that way if I waited 2 hours to buy a ticket that got me in 4 hours later, so if you go buy online first.
After the tour, we hiked over to the Marienbrüche. It’s a bridge that is above the castle and gives an amazing view (a lot of the pictures are taken from there). It spans a high gorge over a waterfall, so the drop is significant. For those afraid of heights, this is a scary spot because it’s small, high up, and there are tons of people packed on it tacking pictures. The wooden slats sag as you walk across which made me a bit nervous. I tried to talk the family into hiking the trail beyond the bridge (you get up higher and have even better views of the castle) but nobody wanted to do more hiking, so we made the big trek down.
At the bottom we found ice cream and enjoyed the town for a bit. One of the guide books mentioned a luge nearby, so I took the family over to see it. Unfortunately, it started to rain while we were driving over there, and they shut it down when it rains. We hung out a bit (watching the hang gliders sail down and kids using the restrooms). About the time we were ready to leave, they were opening the luge back up, so Wendy, Mali, Dillon and I decided to go. Hayley wasn’t interested, so she stayed in the car. It was a fun ride. They have a tow system that pulls you up on your sled, and then you slide down. I crashed into Wendy at the start, but did better the rest of the ride.
We started the 2 hour drive back to Munich. Along the way, we saw a Donner Kebab trailer at the side of the road. It looked like the equivalent of the taco trucks you see around Seattle. I talked Wendy into letting us go, although she refused to eat meat that came from a mobile home parked at the side of a road. Dillon and I got the kebab while Hayley got wurst mit fries. The wurst was a plain old hot dog. Our kebab’s were good, but I’m still comparing them to the falafel in Paris.
The GPS gave us bad advice again, so we ignored it for a while and just followed the signs to Munich. It felt like we were on back roads for a long time, which didn’t help the car sickness. A part of it was on the romantic road which is a beautiful drive. The speed limits are weird on the back roads. I rarely saw any posted. It seemed to be about 90-100 km/hr on the open road and about 40-50 km/hr in the towns (just from speeds of the cars around me and the GPS occasionally said the speed limit).
Finally we got to the autobahn. I’m proud to say I got our Chevy up to 170km/hr (about 105 mph) at one point. Shortly after a Porsche Boxter passed us like we were standing still. You have to watch your rear view mirror in the fast lane because they come up fast and expect you to move. Flashing headlines or left turn signal on when in the far left lane mean move over NOW!
Since we had a few hours before we had to return the car, I dropped the family off at our house. It was nice for them not to have to do the train, switch, train, walk thing again. The public transportation system is amazing, but you do spend a lot of time walking, waiting, and standing. It will be weird to be back to a land where you go to your car, drive, get out, then drive back. That has not been our lifestyle for almost 9 weeks.
The kids had eaten (I gave Mali the bulk of my Donner since she was still hungry), so Wendy and I went out to a Tapas restaurant near our apartment. It was good. I’ve got eating out burnout, so I’m going to be happy to get to more of a homemade dinner lifestyle.
All in all a great road trip and our last scheduled one before we leave Munich. I tried to talk everyone into Rothenburg (2 hour drive) but got shot down. The weather is supposed to finally be consistently sunny (instead of rain/sun/rain) so the family wants to do stuff outside. Plus, I think everyone else is just tired of traveling to see some town or other site. We have seen a lot, and you can’t do it all, so I’m looking forward to finishing up in Munich.