Brucato's Go Museum Hopping!: From Bolzano to Innsbruck to Munich!

Tuesday, 12 March, 2013

Guten Abend!

(Hopefully I’ve got that spelled correctly by now…) Well, we have had quite a traveling sort of day!

The Brenner Pass

We woke up this morning in Bolzano, Italy, and are now in Munich, Germany – with a good bit of Austria thrown in the middle of it all! So…to start…up around 6-ish and repacked everything. Down to breakfast about 7, and actually ready to go by 7:30 a.m. Coolish day, but fairly clear, which is good when you’re heading up into the Alps! Our plan has been to pick up the car in Vienna, and then drop it in Innsbruck – that way, we avoid any drop charges or out of country charges. Lovely drive through the stunning Alps – when we came through the Brenner Pass, there was snow on the ground and on the trees, and it looked wonderful! Then we dropped very quickly down into the valley that is Innsbruck. A truly lovely, small city surrounded on all sides by huge mountain ranges. We found the airport with no problem, and dropped the car off. Then, before we even made it inside the airport, there was the bus heading straight to the train station in town – 2 € each; great deal! Before we knew it, we were at the train station, and purchased tickets on the next train to Munich – 40 € each; not bad! Waited for the train and found it was all divided into compartments – and we had an entire compartment to ourselves, all the way to Munich!

In the Brenner Pass

On the train to Munich

Our hotel - Hotel Kriemhild

Quick – under 2 hours – trip to Munich, and there we were! We decided to take a cab to the hotel – we know there is public transportation to get us there, but figured that with everything we had to carry, we could spoil ourselves for once and get there the easy way. Cab took us a bit out of town into a really lovely residential area.

The Kriemhild Hotel is a small place, probably 25-30 rooms. Our room was ready (yea!) #212 on the second floor. It is a really lovely double room, with a nice work table for the computer and a comfy couch and coffee table as well. And, there are something like 100 television channels, and they all actually WORK; what a concept!

At this point, we need to comment on the European weather. We had heard that a cold front was moving in, but apparently it was accompanied by quite a snow storm in southern England and in northern France and northern Germany! Frankfurt airport was closed for a time, and the Eurostar chunnel train was also shut down because of weather. As that’s our train next Monday, we’re hoping that things will get back to normal sooner rather than later! Here in Munich, the weather was fine this afternoon, but when we got finished with dinner, it was raining fairly hard! And of course our umbrellas were safe and warm in our hotel room!

Tomato soup for lunch

Truffle soup for lunch

So…decided to head into Munich to find some lunch, as it was getting on for 1 p.m. Walked a block or so to the tram, and caught a #17 into town. Must have taken about 10 minutes – very quick and convenient way to get around, that’s for sure! Got off the tram at the “ring road” and found a really lovely café for lunch. Robert had tomato soup, and I had truffle potato soup with brown bread croutons – we were both very happy! From there we walked to the Marien Platz, which is the main square in Munich. Lots of stunning buildings; incredibly neat and clean! We went through the cathedral, which is fairly stark inside, and stopped into a MWF store for a look around. I haven’t been in a MWF store (or, as we usually call it, a Monday-Wednesday-Friday store) in years; they have some really lovely things! Took pictures and wandered for a while, then decided to head back to the hotel and see about naps…Back here about 4:30 p.m. Robert is very pleased with our “neighborhood” as there are individual houses and yards interspersed among the apartment buildings.

Outside the Hunting & Fishing Museum

This is the fishing part

Decided to try La Brasserie for dinner; it’s a couple of blocks away, and comes highly recommended by the hotel. Well…they were right; a terrific place! The owner is a character – shifts between French and German in mid-sentence! Robert started with their tomato soup, and then had a chicken dish – sliced pieces set over grilled vegetables – it looked great! I had their entrecote with sauce béarnaise and potatoes dauphinoise; fabulous! For dessert, Robert had cassis mousse and I had tarte au citron … YUM! As I said, when we left the restaurant, we found that it was raining! Very surprising, but I’m hoping that the rain stays and the snow goes farther north!

In for the night now – some very important Champions League football (read: soccer!) games taking place tonight and tomorrow! Go Barca!