We started our day with a bike tour of the city with Radius Tours. My stomach was acting up the night before I think from the heat yesterday and from our rush in eating between sights. Anyway, being on a bike and in a forward position helped, but I was pretty beat.

Our tour guide Iain was from GB but had moved to Munich for his gf - hmm. Noticing a theme here with the tour guides...anyway, we biked from the trainstation where the Radius' office is located, around to Karlstor (Karl's Gate) to see the fountain in front of it, then over to and through Sendlinger Tor to see Assamkirche, a small church named after it's builders, the Assam brothers. These brothers originally lived in the building beside where the church is. They went on a voyage where there was a bad storm, so they vowed to God that they would build Him a church if they survived the storm. When they returned to Munich, they bought the building beside their house and built the church in the narrow gap between the two properties.

We then made our way to Marienplatz and then over to Platzl where Iain gave us a little too much history on the Hofbrauhaus - ie the relationship between too much beer, walking sticks, front flaps on lederhosen, the in-house open gutter system and suede shoes. Next, we made our way over to the English Garden. This place is huge, and walking, we only saw a tiny bit of it. Even biking, we only managed to see a littl bit more. I think he said the whole park was 12 km? We stopped at the Chinese Tower (which really isn't Chinese) for lunch b/c here, was a Hohfgaden! It was much like a Marche restaurant - you went in, ordered what you liked, and paid at the till. Except here, there was tons of beer stands!

After lunch, we made our way back to the train station through an alternate route through the perimeter of Munich.

After this tour, Pete and I made our way to the Residenz - the king's palace. Here, we did the audioguided tour of the Treasury - holy cow, could these people need any more useless stuff? Everything on display was very beautiful, but quite useless. But i guess if you're royalty, you're royalty. After the Treasury, we went to the other side of the building to see how royalty in Bavaria actually lived. Unfortunately, a lot of the palace was destroyed in WWII, but what survived or what was reconstructed and restored was much like Versialles! I was surprised to see how much the Bavarians enjoyed French Renaissance and adopted the style for themselves.

While in the Residenz, it started thunder storming and pouring! We donned our Taiga gear and covered our Deuters and walked it over to the Alte Pinkothek - the Art Gallery. I think people were looking at us a little funny b/c although it seemed like the locals hated rain - using purses and plastic bags to cover their heads, they didn't seem to care about wearing proper rain gear!

We arrived at the art gallery, not too drenched, but a little squeaky in our runners. We did a quick Rick Steves guided tour of the German, French and Italian Renaissance - some Raphael and some Peter Paul Reubens. While touring the gallery, we saw a woman making a study of the Renaissance painting style by reproducing one of the works in the gallery and a few high school kids filming part of a movie in the gallery!

After the art gallery, we made our way to the Viktulienmarkt, the old outdoor market, where Pete reserved us dinner at Zum Alten Markt. This cozy restaurant is located in a 400 year old building - not sure if it has been around for 400 years as well, but it looked like a cross between a little cottage and a hunting lodge. It had these little antlers that were displayed, and Pete and I wondered which animals they came from. Then we saw a stuffed rabbit head with antlers on it, so we *had* to ask the waitress about it. She laughed and said it was just a joke and the antlers were from a small deer. We googled rabbits with antlers (jackalopes, a myth) and small German deer (Roe deer, real) anyway ;b