MONDAY, JULY 1
A lazy day…we went to a cafe for a late breakfast, to a movie in the evening (Rocket Man – a great escape for our brains), and walked over an hour back to our Airbnb. The air was much cooler. The heat broke with lightening, followed by a gentle rain as darkness descended.
During the night, total relief came in the form of lightening, thunder and pounding rain.
Munich put up a more pleasant face on our long walk from Sendling to the neighborhood where we were staying Schwabing-West. The Eisbach, a wide river that runs through Munich, not unlike the Tiber in Rome, is tree-lined with walking and biking paths. Along the river banks, people picnicked and hung out.
We passed the Deutsches Museum with has a gold eagle rising from it’s roof. At first we were confused, thinking it was a symbol of the Third Reich but later learned the eagle is the symbol of Germany; the swatstika, the Nazi symbol. We also learned Munich means monk.
A main shopping center, like so many from Marseilles to Milan, has wide, busy pedestrian shopping streets, fountains where people hang out, imposing “old” rebuilt buildings, and some small cozy restaurants with sidewalk seating. Here the liveliness of this city of 1.6 million inhabitants was in abundance.
