Leanne Shawler, Artist

Where we did the church tour of the inner city. Most of the churches were actually closed, something I didn't factor on: one was for a wedding, a nun was cleaning another, and I think we just might've been too late in the afternoon for a third. Not all of them were closed, however. This is St. Anna's, where a wedding looked to be either in progress or about to start. There were caterers at the foot of the steps. And one more shot of a Christmas market -- this is the lights going into the one at Marienplatz. Now I think I'll hold off my absolute last post about Munich until after Christmas. So happy holidays all!

I have tons of photos from this day, and I was gonna share them all, but surely you're tired of all this Munich stuff by now and want to hear how my Christmas baking is going, or something. Did you guess what my favorite place is? Except we saw it in the snow. We got a nice sunny day for the bus tour day trip. Here's a picture of it from the bus. I kinda like how I managed to make the tree look like a swirly frame for the castle. Pure accident, I assure you. The bus was not really slowing down for us to take pictures. And it was a good 35 minute slog up a hill that got steeper as we went in 24 deg Fahrenheit (approx) weather. (That's -6 for the Celcius folk.) This is in the courtyard before our walking tour, which involved many many curving stairs, began. I fell in love with the effect of light in the Bavarian Alps. Here's one that occurred before we made the last part of the trek to the gatehouse. And here's the delicate light of the sunset as we were walking ba...

day 5... we went to the Residenz, the former home of Bavarian royalty. First though a picture of the Old Town Hall which is right next to the New Town Hall in Marienplatz. It looks newer because it was destroyed during WWII and they rebuilt it. A lot of churches were badly damaged during the war and most of them appear to have been fully restored. (And yes, more Christmas market. There was one inside the Residenz courtyard too.) These are the lions guarding some monument. They look a bit chilly. They were selling Christmas trees and other greens in front of them. St. Catherine's is the yellow building behind it. We took a tour of the Residenz itself, as opposed to the Treasury, or the theatre, etc. This was in the Relics room. Relics were a big thing in Catholicism back in the day (and I think one of the things Luther may have ranted about). I thought it was the odd finger bone or piece of the cross or his shroud. Oh no, it goes much further than that. This might be a bit mac...

Some of my favorite things from Munich: Went to the Englischer Garden, which is a big park, even though it was starting to snow. And then the snow got heavier.... I am missing feet in the photo below .... lost in the snow! My hubby took the following photos.... This was the Christmas Market near the Chinese Tea Garden. I am not kidding when I tell you these things were everywhere....

We spent most of the day at the Alte Pinokotek (art museum) and shopping. Here are a couple of pics that I snapped. This is my favorite spread of my journal: Snow laden branches outside the Pinokotek. We went for a walk to a different train station. I got us lost (briefly) but we came across the Glyptotek. This little ship was perched high atop a steep pitched room of a very upscale shopping mall.

I'm going to spread this out over a series of posts because there are too many photos for just one post. I had a travel journal while I was there, a small Molekine. I ended up gluing pages back to back because the paper was so thin. (I also ended up tearing out most of the last signature). In retrospect, I should've found a chipboard book or something, in the round coaster shape, 'cause that would've been awesome. It snowed during our first night there, so we woke up to this. Our hotel was out in an industrial park, bordered by fields. It took over half an hour to get into the city centre by train. But I had huge fun in the 25 minute walk back to the hotel (not included in travel estimate above) with the snow coming down. These are gargoyles in the New Town Hall in the center of Munich. Just had to take a picture of the following one.... And good news! Jodie of everything vintage has opened her present from me, so I may be interrupting this Munich series to show what ...