Had a sleep in yesterday, definitely needed to catch up on some. Then went out for a late breakfast at a small Italian cafe.

The plan for today was to go to Andechs where monks brew beer it's about the same distance out of Munich from where we were at the beach on the other side of the lake. But on the way we stopped at castle nympheberg in town. If ever there was a castle that looked German this one embodies it perfectly. A huge building with a simple front garden complete with a large lake, the building itself did not look that dissimilar from French castles except it was less elegant, a huge grey monstrosity with red roofing and menacing stone statues in the front garden. In the main hall is where they have the shop set up and you walk straight through to back garden which is just huge, nowhere near as big as Versailles but has a similar layout.

The statues lining the main walkway are very German. Solid stone statues of fierce men wrestling small dragons. One of a man with a stone crown upon his head. No subtlety like the French. And the same goes for the main fountain, a huge pile of stones with water spurting from the middle, that doesn't mean to say that it's not impressive to look at.

So we all piled back into the car and drove to see Andechs. Passed through some very small towns quaint towns before finally arriving at the car park at the bottom of the hill. Yeah it's built on a hill but thankfully not a very big one but the paths are still quite steep to climb up. In all honesty there isn't much to see here and it's because the brewery is still going strong so a lot of areas aren't accessible to tourists. But there is a small church that's open and it's a very beautiful one to say the least. It's nothing I haven't seen before I just wasn't expecting such a decorated and elaborate church on a small hill.

But everyone doesn't visit here for the church, they come for the beer and the beer garden. so naturally the beer is the local beer and of course they serve food as well and I figured why not try some more of the local delicacies (don't know if that's quite the right word but I certainly is food) anyway I got a big pork shank, which in German translates to pigs ankle, now the pigs here must be horse size because these are the biggest ankles I've ever seen. It's a portion for two and I have put a photo of it on the food album. The whole thing is encased in delicious crackling and the meat is so tender and juicy but it's just so much meat. I powered through as much of it as i could and towards the end it was a choice between the rest of my beer and the last piece of crackling. I chose the beer, it was a big piece of crackling.

Even though the food in general here doesn't look at all appetising it's certainly is tasty food. Except for the wiesswurst but I already knew that.

At this point the weather had taken a turn for the much worse and was about to start raining and in Germany after hot days it gets cold fast and the rain get heavy faster. So got stuck in traffic on the way back, which turned out to be a couple of farmers walking their cattle. Cows are so stupid, every now and then a couple I them would stop look around, forget what they were doing, walk in another direction and then remember and walk where they were supposed to. After a good 15-20 minutes they were finally off the road and we were finally home free. Quickly got back and got changed and went out to watch the euro final.

Now it wasn't as enjoyable because Germany weren't in the final but if they were we would've been in a large beer garden with 4000 drinking Germans and that would've been fun but instead we went to a nearby restaurant/bar and sat around the table drinking beer and kind of watching the football. I won't tell you who won in case someone reading this hasn't watched it yet but just a heads up Italy didn't win. So yeah got an early night sleep of midnight or close to 1 and I'm about to head out now so I'll tell you all about today's adventures later

A la prochaine

Elliott