Mike and Christine – Day 2 in Munich

Michael and Christine arrived on Sunday afternoon, sometime around 3pm. Deborah and I once more took the S-Bahn up to the airport and waited only a short while for them to gather their bags and meet us outside.

We then had about 30 minutes to wait for the next train so we grabbed a quick sandwich for Mike and then stepped into a bar in the airport since these were the only seats available. The waitress was not really happy with us sitting in 4 seats and only buying one beer, but I am sure we were not the first to do this.

We then jumped on the S-Bahn and headed back to our flat. At one point the train was stopped for a few minutes and it was reminiscent of the train breaking down when Rachel and Jeremy arrived, but it finally started back up and we made it to Ostbahnof, and then onto the U-4 to our stop at Max Webber Platz.

Mike had been not really feeling well, and Christine had also arrived with a cold but come Monday morning we were ready to head into town and see the Residenz Palace. We hopped on the U-Bahn and 2 stops later arrived at Odeonsplatz. There are side-by-side Mercedes and Aston-Martin car dealerships in Odeonsplatz, and I wanted to quickly step into the Mercedes show room to look at one of the original S-Class cars, this one a 1957 beauty.

We then headed down to Marienplatz to quickly show them the city center and the Rathaus (city hall). I snapped a few photo’s including one of them in Marienplatz, and one of them in Karlsplatz just as we were entering the Residenz Museum.

I believe the Residenz Palace has over 15 different court yards, and one of the first ones you come to is shown below, with the manicured lawns and hedges, and a copy of a 16^th century bronze work of Perseus after he had cut of the head of Medussa. The original is inside the museum and is remarkable as you get a true sense of the power of his body, and the passion of the moment just after he had slain the mythical monster.

We wanted to make it a short trip, only to focus on a few of the nicer items and places in the palace. One of the really great rooms you first come to is call the Antiquarium, which is a long massive hallway like room where the royalty would entertain large numbers of guests. The room is full of roman era and modern examples of busts, and the ceiling is painted with scenes from many of the towns and villages in Bavaria at the time. The royal family ate on the raised Dias (where you see Mike and Christine and Deborah) while their guests would eat below.

The next great room you come to is referred to as the Room of the Black Doors, where there are 4 massive black marble entrances into this room. It is unique because the room is painted with a false 3-dimensional ceiling. The original paint work was on fabric that was raised and attached to the ceiling, but this was destroyed in WW II and a replica was painted in the ceiling an only recently completed. It is hard to get a true sense of this effect from a picture, but you can sort of see it below.

We then sped through several of the ‘apartments’ in the palace that were long sequences of rooms devoted to either the royal family or their important visitors. Here are a few photos of the rooms and some of the furniture. The last picture below is of the Green Room, one of the most ornate and well decorated rooms in the palace.

We then quickly made our way through the porcelain collection in the palace. It is estimated that the Wittelsbach family may possess one of the best collections of porcelain in the world, and it is till highly valued and made here in Germany with the famous Meissen and Nymphenburg porcelain made nearby here in Bavaria.

The final room you visit on your way through the palace is the hall of ancestors. This hall has many paintings of the great ancestors of the Wittelsbach family, some of them going back to before 1100 AD. The room itself if gold and gilded and dazzling to the eye. Take a look for yourself.

By this time though Mike was feeling very much under the weather and cold and fading fast. We decided to head out and went nearby to the Franzikaner Café and got some traditional bavarian food (including bullion soup for Mike) prior to heading home.