In Munich's Englischer Garden

After six days of cycling around Bavaria, in Munich we decided to do things differently and set about exploring on foot. I'd planned a hectic schedule - what else - and we had a lot of ground to cover, including a walking tour of the city's historic centre, several beer gardens and much more. There was of course more than we could ever hope to achieve, but we did see a lot of Munich in a short amount of time. 

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing more of Munich - it's beautiful, you really should go - but today I'm sharing photos from the time we spent wandering around the Englischer Garden. 

It's big. It's among Europe's biggest city parks, bigger than Hyde Park in London and New York's Central Park. We only saw a small part of it, and we did tick off the sights I wanted to see, so let's get on.

We approached it from Prinzregentenstrasse and the first thing I was looking for was the surfers. Yes surfers.

I'd read that there was surfing just past the Haus der Kunst art museum on the River Eisbach. As we entered the English Gardens we kept our eyes peeled and sure enough soon saw someone walk past us in his wetsuit with a surfboard under his arm. 

So it was true.

But it didn't look like we'd found the right spot judging by the pictures above.

We carried on, and were soon distracted by this beautiful red tree on a central island.

We carried on following the river and sure enough we found the surfers. It was the strangest sight and most compelling to watch.

I have many photos from this part of our walk, trying to get the perfect shot and wanting to see how each of them did. It was mesmerising. Soon though MOH suggested we move on, as the next thing on our list was the beer garden and the Chinese Tower.

We'd also lost all sense of direction but headed towards the centre of the park and then alongside the river hoping that we'd work it out. We did soon enough, when a horse and carriage stopped and offered to take us on our way. Declining we headed off the way he'd come, now pretty sure we were on the right tracks.

And we were right, just when we thought we might give in because we'd clearly got very lost we spotted a signpost labelled "Chinesischer Turm" - hoorah!  It was built in the 18th century during the craze for everything oriental.

CHINESISCHER TURM

Not only had we reached the second waypoint on my list, we'd also found Munich's oldest beer garden!  Soon we'd equipped ourselves with beer and currywurst and sat in the sun enjoying the very civilised way to drink beer. And plan our way back towards the centre of Munich.

I'd provisionally planned to see some of the other historic follies in the park, but after a day of walking and now knowing roughly how far it was back they were shelved for the day. 

Quite an enjoyable afternoon - and who'd have thought it, surfers in Munich.  Certainly not me.

Füssen: a pretty town which we saw twice

Yes, we're back in Germany for a blog post or two this week as I realised when I looked back at 2015 in photos that I didn't quite finish sharing pictures from our trip to Bavaria last June. Füssen was where we picked up our bikes and headed off on our cycle tour, as well as being our finishing point. It's a pretty town and it was on our second visit  - after all the cycling - that we got to see more of it and appreciate its personality.

It nestles at the foot of the Bavarian Alps and I've since learnt is the highest town in Bavaria at over 800m above sea level. As well as being our starting point for the cycle tour, it's also the southern starting point of the Romantische Straße and it's believed that the name Füssen comes from the Latin meaning "supply camp".  Interesting because if you remember we cycled along the Via Claudia Augusta cycle route - a route across the Alps which follows an ancient Roman road - on our first day. 

As I said, it's a pretty town, look:

Like many of the Bavarian towns we visited it's buildings are painted more imaginatively than ours in the UK.  

It's also well set up for cyclists, this was just one of the bike racks I spotted. 

HOW PRETTY AND INVITING? 

I remember for the second day, the cycling notes said to turn left just before the red church, when we read this  the night before we thought it was a bit random and hoped we'd spot the red church, and our turning. The next day we realised we'd have struggled to miss this beautifully decorated church!

THERE WAS NO MISSING THE BEAUTIFUL RED CHURCH...

The blues and the yellows of the buildings above look postcard perfect, and I can't help but wonder if just a little planning went into this street's overall look? Either way, it's stunning. 

As we walked around we stopped and admired these in one of the shop windows, and wondered what they were. We soon found out that they were the town's speciality Snowballs. They're sweet and huge - a good handful, although you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of this snowball if anyone threw it. They were pretty solid, and we could see how they got their name when we tried one. It was a mixture of pastry and filling, in layers much the way you'd create a snowball from snow. They weren't really to my taste, but I'm glad we tried one.

SNOWBALLS

The other thing I noticed on our walk around Füssen was the signs hanging above the shops, here's just a small selection:

On Sunday I shared a couple of black and white pictures of the band that set up almost out of nowhere. It was a great end to our stay in Füssen and once we'd finished eating I decided to get some close ups of the band, the tuba player was my target. And then I noticed he was sitting outside a real life fairy door!

And that is, I think a true reflection of this pretty town. Our next stop was Munich, in a few days I'll share what we got up to when we arrived there.

Black and White photo: Oompah!

As I looked through my posts of 2015 to share my 2015 in photos I realised I still had some photos, and stories to share from our trip to Bavaria back in June. So as January is generally my "worst" month I thought it would be perfect to share some of my photos from the summer.

It's also been a while since I've linked up with Charly at PODCast and her Black and White Photo Project, so I'm putting that right too.  These photos were taken on our last evening in Füssen, which was the start and end point for our cycle tour around Bavaria.

It's a pretty town and we ventured out for dinner. We found an Italian restaurant in a pretty courtyard and it wasn't long before we noticed band members wander up and hang around on the other side of the square.  

Soon they were set up - seemingly out of nowhere - and started playing the old favourites and the more traditional German fare too.  It was lovely to have their accompaniment as we enjoyed our meal and some German beer - a fitting end to the first part of our holiday, as the next day we were heading back to Munich for a few days before heading home. 

PS. THE CYCLIST IN THE BACKGROUND ISN'T MOH, JUST A RANDOM CYCLIST ALSO ENJOYING THE BAND!