Since we didn’t actually make it to Munich after Christmas, we planned a trip to go over Easter break since we had Friday and Monday off work. Our flight was 655am, so we got up around 4am.  We didn’t have a lot on the agenda for the day since we knew we’d be pretty tired and had an early wake up the next day,  so wanted to keep the day open.

We had plans to go to the Viktualienmarkt to wander around and grab some lunch, but unfortunately when we got there, everything was closed for Good Friday and was going to be closed on Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday too.  Our only opportunity to go was Saturday which we had an all day tour planned for. We decided to go find Hard Rock Cafe, I always have to collect a shot glass for my dad when we go to different places.  Right across the street from Hard Rock was the famous Hofbräuhaus! We decided to get something to eat at the Augustiner right next to the Hofbräuhaus.  I got the roast knuckle of pork, and Greg got a sausage plate.  We shared a little appetizer of sausages, some dip and a pretzel.

We walked around for the rest of the afternoon, checked out the beautiful Marienplatz and went up to the top for some nice views of the city. It was a perfect, clear and sunny day.

We checked out Trip Advisor for restaurant recommendations, and our first night for dinner we went to Kuchlverzeichnis.  It was a cute little restaurant and the waitresses were dressed up, and we had our first veal schnitzel.  The portions were huge, and it was delicious! We couldn’t pass on the fresh apple fritters with ice cream for dessert!

We had a day trip bus tour planned to go see Neuschwanstein  and Hohenschwangau  castles about an hour and a half outside of Munich in the country.   Luckily the market opened at 8 so we had about a half an hour to walk around and find something for breakfast.

Once we checked in for the tour, we were told due to bad weather up in the mountains, our plans have changed and we weren’t going to be able to do the bike ride around the mountains, but we will get to stop at Linderhof Palace on the way as well as stopping in a cute little German town Oberammergau. Here is what the drive up looked like! 
 

This little chapel was built by monks in 1684, Ludwig II got his inspiration from Versailles of what he wanted Linderhof palace to model.

We did a tour of Ludwig’s grotto, his man cave to escape to!

This is Oberammergau, this little town is where the Passion Play is held every 10 years. You can only be a part of the play if you live in the town and the year before the play, all the men aren’t allowed to cut their hair or shave so that they look the part!  The town is also famous for their wooden coocoo clocks they make.

Next stop, and finally, the castles! Sadly our tour guide said we would have time to tour Hohenschwangau and he said it wasn’t worth it anyway, how is a castle not worth it?!

I’m not doing what you think I’m doing! The tour guide asked for a show of hands of who wanted to go get coffee instead of trekking in the rain to the bridge to try and get a view of the castle which he said there was a 95% chance we wouldn’t get to see because it was way too foggy, coffee for me!

Pretty lake at the base of the castles.

We had a bit of a trek uphill to Neuschwanstein  castle, it would have been nice but we were getting soaked and it was freezing!

These pictures unfortunately don’t do it any justice! It was really hard to see very far because of how foggy it was.

Pictures weren’t allowed inside unfortunately.

We made our way back to the bus and back to Munich.  Dinner was at Steinheil 16, another Trip Advisor schnitzel recommendation.  This schitzel was pork, I saw someone order it the night before and wanted to try the spätzle, its an egg noodle pasta.

We were pooped after that! I’ll soon fill you in on the next few days!