München und Salzburg

I have to say that  had a pretty great weekend last week.  I flew to Munich on Friday morning.  When I got there, I went directly to Marienplatz, the city center, with its beautiful town hall, complete with Glockenspiel, a clockwork display of mechanical figures (think It's a Small World) that runs two times per day (3 times in the summer).

I joined up with the Sandeman's free tour of Munich and got to see a number of sights right away.  Upon doing some research, it seems that this company also does free tours (in English) in Berlin and Paris.  I think I'll be taking advantage of them as well.  My tour guide was entertaining and knowledgeable, plus he kept the plugging of the company's other paid tours to a minimum.  Seriously, I would recommend checking this out if you ever find yourself in a European city.  There seem to be a number of tours offered:

http://www.neweuropetours.eu/

In fact, I plan on checking out the Berlin tour shortly.

Here's the thing about Munich:  it feels like a theme park.  I can't quite explain why, but most of the time I felt like I was in EPCOT.  Also, if you are traveling alone, things start to feel a little lonely after 8pm when all the shops close and you walk past the beer halls filled with people talking and laughing (and drinking beer).  Thankfully, I had a big day ahead of me, so I wanted to make it an early night anyway.

On Saturday, I took a train to Salzburg, Austria.  Yes, the home of both Mozart and The Sound of Music.

I dare you to walk down this path without fighting the urge to sip and sing "Do Re Mi."

Also in Salzburg was the Festung Hohensalzburg, a huge medieval fortress looking over Salzburg.  It was quite a climb to the top (and even once I got there, more stairs and hills were awaiting me), but when I did make it all the way up, I saw this:

And this:

And this:

I even got my picture taken:

Sunday was spent once again in Munich where I visited the Alte Picakothek museum (one of the places specifically mentioned in Betsy and the Great World), the Englischer Garten (sort of like Munich's Central Park), and some other places.  Before taking the train to the airport, I sat at a cafe facing the great town hall of Marienplatz and had the most German dinner I could think of without eating sausage: potato salad, a pretzel, and beer.