On the fourth day of Christmas markets....

...my true love gave to me, four antique birds

I'll explain this one is a second, first...let me tell you how the day began (not good).  So we woke up about 5am hot.  Guy opened the window for a bit, but the traffic was zooming by and was quite loud. So after things cooled off he shut the window and we fell asleep again. When we woke up it was NOON!  Oops! Should have set an alarm. :| So as I'm racing to get ready, I put my face on in the bathroom (where the zoom mirror lives) but went into the hallway to do my hair while Guy takes his shower. The closest plug is the one in the safe, so I used my new converter/adaptor, plugged in my Chi and set the temp to 425. As I grabbed it to start doing my hair I realized it was only warm - not hot and the light was off. So I plugged it into a few other sockets, tried my old faithful converter and still .... nothing. Ok, so all you ladies out there that go to bed with wet hair know what it looks like in the morning, right? Ahem...and when you have no way to fix it you get in a "mood", right? And you know the Chi iron is not cheap, and it is only a few months old.. so you know where this is going....  but I still managed to put on my happy face (not super happy but happy to be on vacay face), braided my hair and stuck my hat on. It was nearly 1pm before we headed out but it was fine because we just switched our plans and we decided to see the German museum of Science and Technology instead of doing the hop on hop off bus.  So after eating two granola bars, we set out for the day.

The museum was easy to get to and it was a huge place. The people taking our money, giving us the maps, and scanning our tickets were ALL having a "Monday" as they were a bit grumpy. :) So we went inside and worked our way around the spots Guy wanted to go to (this is a dude place for the most part...but he puts up with all my shopping so it's only fair). There were lots of planes and engines and machinery...you get the picture - this is where the "four antique birds" comes from as my intro to today's blog. I thought it was going to have WWII stuff in it - uniforms, guns, etc.  But sadly no luck.  I took a few photos and listened to a guy give a talk on snowflakes and CDs in German. His voice was pleasant and I just needed a break, so I sat in the crowd like I understood. (Mark and Mary Stoffel, I think of you every day and wish you were here with us). :)

After a few hours we decided we were getting hungry so we set out for lunch at an old beer hall that was recommended to us by "Sven" at the Sheraton's front desk on our first day. He told us it was over by the Four Points hotel so we hopped a train and found the hotel. We went inside to talk to the hotel folks because we weren't for sure where we were going and we wanted to find a bank (markets don't take credit cards. sigh. but now I remember Mark telling me they didn't) and I need some kind of device that removes bed head since my Chi passed on to the next life. The two gals at the desk were fantastic and pointed us next door to the "Saturn" electronics store - very convenient - for the curling iron and down the street for the beer hall. As luck would have it, I had about 20 flat irons to choose from! So I grabbed a Remington (knew the name) and headed out of this mega electronics store.  Kinda hard to explain how big it is, but I think it covered nearly half a block and had more than one level. Out the door and to the right was the beer hall and even at 4pm it had quite a crowd (early bird types if you know want I mean) and they appeared to be locals.

The name was the Augustiner Braeustuben. I didn't catch when it opened exactly, but some time in the 1800s (says the internet). There is a huge beer hall where you can see the bars and it was lined with long tables where you sat with other people. They also had a quiet quaint space with tables just down a few stairs, so we opted for that section and was led to our table by our waiter. He was not having a "Monday" as he was excellent and gave us menus in English (again with photos - very helpful). Our food came quickly and it was delicious. Guy had schnitzel (veal) and I had some kind of sausage over kraut. We ate pretty much everything but still found some room for apple streudel. So so so good!  Good thing my pants have a stretchy waist!

As we left the Augustiner we went back to the train station and headed for a new market, the one at Sendlinger Tor. This was supposed to have people wearing medieval clothing at their shops. When we arrived it was already very dark (6pm) and it was lit beautifully.  Even though very small, we still enjoyed the shops and it had a nice crowd that were family types and were either visiting the shops or just sitting around having a fun evening. I sampled their gluhwein and it was good. The mug it came in was a keeper. :) So after an hour we decided to go back to the market close by our hotel - the Saturday night nightmare market.  However, Sunday night was some better and guess what...Monday night was PERFECT! This market, Tollwood, has quickly grown from market hell to our favorite place to hang out. :) So many food options, shops, music...it has it all. We compare it to the DuQuoin State Fair on steroids. So I shopped for a new hat and Guy got and sausage sandwich. Since the lines were short at the Crepe place, I got the same thing I had the other night - banana and chocolate. This time I only waited 10 minutes instead of nearly an hour like Saturday night. We also found that the music tent was managable tonight. There was no place to sit down, but we had a small table to put our drinks on (a chopped off tree stump). The band of 14 musicians and singers were rockin' out to 80s cover songs and we were excited we knew the words. :) We stayed for well over an hour as the music was excellent and it was the end to a perfect day (well maybe didn't start out perfect). As the misty rain became a little heavier and my legs were even heavier than the mist, I was ready to head back to the hotel.

Arriving back at the hotel, we warmed up with long hot showers and I started downloading a few pictures. I didn't take a lot today because the museum lacked what I would consider interesting photo ops (Guy would differ) but we still snapped a few fun shots of our day and night. We are looking forward to tomorrow as we hop on and hop off the big red bus and see Munich from the top (it seems like we've seen underneath it a lot) however it is our last day in this wonderful city and our vacation is zipping by! We do look forward to coming back and visiting again. That is for sure!

Night all and yes....I have my alarm set. ;)