Munich is awesome

So I think I'm going to try this style, where all the words are just in the figure captions. Real wooden beer kegs still in use in Munchen (the German name for Munich).

Here is a daylight view of the new Neues Rathaus (new City Hall). Yes, city hall is Rathaus in German. As with most things in Munich, it is mostly a reconstruction, as Munich was heavily bombed during WWII.

At the nice outdoor market a block away from our hotel. I thought this was clever. It's stuff for birds to use in building nests and also housing for ladybugs.

A chimera.

Glyptothek. An amazing sculpture museum. More pictures below.

Königsplatz (König is German for King and platz is just place). The stonework in the plaza there is amazing.

See what I mean? The white ones are marble.

One of the treasures of the State Collection of Antiquities Museum (Antikensammlungen Staatliche Antikensammlung).An amazing late Roman empire cup.

On one of the grates over the gate into the courtyard of the Rathaus in Munich.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

This cherub in combat is on the main plinth for the column that the statue of the Virgin Mary is on, and from which Marienplatz takes its name.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

There is this little box for a guard to stand in out of the rain. Like the garitas of Puerto Rico. This looks out over the center of Marienplatz.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

More from the State Antiquities Museum.

The star of the State Antiquities Museum. An amazing cup made by one Ekekias who was smart enough to sign it.

Famous 'Boy Strangling a Goose' statue. In the Glyptothek. This was an amazing museum of classical sculpture. It is truly a truly impressive collection and is housed in a structure that highlights the sculpture perfectly. The finest sculpture museum I have ever been to! Can't recommend it highly enough. A subway stop is located right there on Konigplatz, and there are a ton of museums right in that district.

Glyptothek

Glyptothek

Faun statue in the Glyptothek. If you look behind it you'll see a painting on the wall. While we were there they had a special exhibit. A painter had done these colorful, rather abstract views of lots of the major pieces. It was a good addition to the pieces I thought.

For my money these are the two men who destroyed the Roman Republic, or at least had the largest hands in it. Marius (left) and Sulla (right).

This is called the Monkey Tower, because legend has it that a monkey saved a small child of the Wittelsbach family (the family that ruled Bavaria for 700 years) from a ravaging pig that escaped the market. I read this is a guidebook I think. We walked through here on our walking tour of Munich and our guide didn't mention it. Speaking of guides, we too the paid (12 euros) walking tour instead of one of the free ones, since the free ones had some not great reviews online. I thought our tour and tour guide were great and 12 euros was more than a fair price. The walk lasted almost three hours and we saw a ton of cool stuff.

Courtyard of the Monkey Tower.

Hunting dog in the Glyptothek.

So, there's this huge park called the English Garden (Englischer Garten) in Munich. The water comes under a bridge in a rush, and people surf on it. Apparently it was forbidden for a time, then tolerated, and now as of a few years ago, completely legal. The city even put a concrete block in the river the make the wave bigger. There were two people surfing there while we were there, even though it was pretty cold.

This is an astrolabe in the Deutsches Museum. A huge (and I mean takes more than a day to see all of it huge) science and technology museum in Munich on an island in the Isar River.

One of the highlights of the museum for me. A WWII era spy radio.

Early WWII era computer.

This is the other star of the Deutsches Museum, U-1, the first German submarine. Pretty cool.

So many BMW station wagons, which I love. I saw more of these in one day in Munich that I have seen in 50 years of living in the US. Why these don't sell more in the US is a mystery to me. Wagons are practical and cool.

Oil lamps.

Snowbells