more on Munich

We left for Munich Friday afternoon. Some people have advised us that the buses are the best way to travel and others have recommended the trains -- so we decided to give both a shot. We took the bus to Munich and the train home.
We had a couple things to do before we left Friday and actually ended up cutting it pretty close. I was worried that we were going to miss the bus -- Jason says I just worry too much, after all, we had about three minutes to spare.
The bus was was pleasant and uneventful. We both got a little work done and enjoyed the views of the countryside. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Munich and we took the train straight out to our hotel. We were staying a little ways out of the city, but the place where we were was very nice and quiet (which was good because Jason had to rest before his race).
We got up Saturday morning and headed into the center of town to find the expo so Jason could check in for his race. We didn't have any idea where it was, and I was quite impressed that we were able to find it. Jason checked in and got his very bright orange shirt -- it is very stylish.
Then we headed out to the Olympic park. I had read that you can get an audio tour and walk around the entire complex, and I thought this sounded very interesting. I was very disappointed because there was a big track meet in the stadium that day and so they weren't doing tours. But we were still able to walk around the outside of the buildings.
I wanted to find information about the attacks from the Munich Olympics and was a little surprised at how little we found. It really seems like they try to down-play the events. There is one small memorial but you could almost walk right by it without even noticing. I actually thought this was quite sad.
After the Olympic park we headed back to the center of town and went to a market/beer garden to take a small break and have lunch. After lunch we went on a bike tour. We had read in our tour book that if you only have one day in Munich that you need to take Mike's Bike Tour, so we did. It was a quite-enjoyable 4-hour tour (which included a 1-hour break at the famous beer garden in the middle of the park). That's where we got the monster pretzel (and, yes, it really was that big).
Munich has this huge park (it's 4 times the size of Central Park) and we rode all through it. There is a part of the river that cuts through the park and forms a stream. There is one place where the stream gets moving quite quickly and creates a wave where people go surfing. It is kind of backwards surfing, but it was still very interesting to watch -- there are a couple of pictures on the picassa site.
For our bike tour we were riding around on these big California cruisers, what fun. I was really amused by the separate bike lanes they have in Munich, equipped with their own special bike-lane street lights (it will make sense if you look at the picture on the picassa site).
Our bike tour hit up all of the major tourists spots (see picassa page for pictures) and was a great way to see the city. After the tour we grabbed some dinner and headed back so Jason could rest up for his race.
Continue reading his post for more information about the race.