Guten Abend aus Deutschland

We're in Munich tonight.

Yes, I know I said we were going to Venice after Rome, but we're playing it all by ear and decided to go further north instead.

We got to the station yesterday morning and the next train leaving was going to Milano within ten minutes, so we got on it. There's some really beautiful scenery just north of Rome, we hadn't seen much of it on the way down as we were on a night train then. Further north it gets a lot more industrial, but we couldn't see much of that due to some of the thickest fog I've ever seen.

Milano has a pretty boring station, it looks impressive from outside, but there's not a lot to do there, not even many places to sit. We had a few hours to kill there before catching a train to Verona where we met the sleeper train to Munich at 1am this morning.

If I ever here the first bar of the Platter's "Only You" again I'll go crazy. It got played over and over in all the Italian stations in a Kinder chocolate ad.

So, now we've left Italy and are getting used to saying guten tag and danke, instead of bongiorno and grazie.

Tomorrow we're hoping to do a day trip down to Fussen to see the fairy tale castle. The day after that we'll most likely head towards Heidleburg, but that may change.

Only one photo today, hopefully more tomorrow when we get back from Fussen.



This is Marienplatz, looking toward the Rathaus (town hall). I've never seen so many clock towers in one place as there are in the old part of Munich. You can see one in the picture, there are two behind me and another to the left of me.

Incidentally, the picture of the steps I posted a few days ago wasn't the Spanish steps, and therefore not the steps used in the movie the Italian Job. I must say, Donna was quite impressed with how anatomically correct and to scale the two male statues were at the top of the stairs. She took a picture to prove it.

Oh, and the hotel we stayed at, the Hotel Romae, we originally booked that from the railway station when we arrived. The woman there said it was 180 euros, which we paid at the station. We weren't sure afterwards if that was just the deposit, as a notice in the room said the usual rate for the room was 210 Euros and Trip Advisor says it averages 180. When we checked out yesterday morning, our bill came to 16 Euros, that was for two bottles of wine we'd bought. So, 60 Euros a night for a good hotel in a capital city; you can't complain about that. The hotel in Paris cost us about 130 Euros a night and that didn't even include breakfast.