Munich, Part Two

On Sunday, we woke up to another beautifully sunny and warm day in Munich.  We really couldn't have asked for better weather for our weekend away.  Our first stop that day was to the Nymphenburg Palace.  This palace was built in the 1600s as a summer residence for the rulers of Bavaria and was used by royal family as an escape from their tough life in the city.  Even though the palace is only a 15-minute tram ride away from the city center now, back then the area was outside the city in the country.  All the palace buildings and gardens cover a huge area of 500 acres.

The main buildings and front pond of Nymphenburg Palace

The whole palace is now split up into several different museums, but we only had time to see the part of the castle where the main hall and the royal family's apartments were, which were located in this building below.

The main buildings of the palace

The first room on the tour is the best and most breathtaking.  Below are pictures of the Great Hall, which gained it's opulence from it's redesign by one of the Bavarian rulers in the 18th century.  I just loved everything about this room and I was glad we spent a long in here admiring all the details and the art.  I loved the vaulted ceiling, gold trimming, and the vibrant colors in all the frescoes.  The sunshine radiating in from the two floors of windows didn't hurt either.

The Great Hall

We actually got really lucky because they were supposed to begin some work on the front facade of the palace the day before we arrived.  However, the starting date got pushed back to the day after we left.  The chandeliers were all wrapped up because they will be doing work in this room.  You can see in the picture below in the bottom right some of the scaffolding they will be putting up for the work.  The work will continue through the rest of the summer, so I was ecstatic we were able to see the palace before the renovation began.

Other side of the Great Hall

 We also visited other hallways and rooms in the palace that made up the royal family's living area.  The ruler and his wife each had separate apartments, off to either side of the great hall.  This hallway below had portraits of all the other Bavarian residences.  Seriously, how many houses do you need?

A hallway in the Nymphenburg palace

One bedroom used by the royal family

The room where King Ludwig II was born

The garden behind the palace

Another small residence on the palace grounds when they needed to get away from getting away

Darren in front of the small residence, Badenburg

Me, just outside the palace grounds, heading back to the city center

It was then time for lunch and we all are now aware of how important meals are thanks for Darren's commentary in the last post.  Since it was Sunday, most places were serving brunch, so we had a great brunch at the Glockenspiel Cafe, which was on the sixth floor of a building right on Marienplatz.  We had a great view of square and of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), the Neo-Gothic building you can see below.

After lunch, we visited the Alte Pinakothek, which houses 14th- to 18th-century Flemish, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish paintings.  The museum was small, which was fine and some of the paintings were interesting, but the museum did not have any signs explaining any of the paintings or artists.  They only displayed the painting's name in German and the artist's name underneath the painting on the frame.  It would have been great to know more about what we were looking at.  The one upside to this art museum was that they actually allowed you to take pictures, just without a flash.  So we were able to take some shots to remember what we saw.

Dutch painting from the 16th century

Leonardo Da Vinci, Virgin and Child, 1473

After the museum, we started our walk back to the train station and ran into an old city gate designed in the 19th century in a Greek style.  When we got to the station, we decided to take a earlier train home because we didn't want to get home really late after a long weekend.  We literally made this decision ten minutes before the train left and just got on the train, sat down, and off we went.  Even though train travel can be a lot longer, it is so refreshing to get on any train you want and pick whatever seat you want.  You can even store all your luggage at the train station all day in lockers, so you can just grab your stuff and go.

Propylaea

That was our whirlwind trip to Munich!  There was a lot more to see that we didn't get to, but we were happy with what we did.  More posts to come this week, including a unique Swiss holiday I celebrated yesterday!