Where to stay when traveling

I would like to preface this post by declaring that I am not a representative of any online company and am not getting paid to advertise for advertise for anyone [though if you sign up we could earn travel credit, so if you wanted to do that give us a shout out first and we'll send you an invite ;) ]. With that out of the way, I would like to recommend to you Airbnb when traveling. We have found housing through their site three times now and it has, so far, been nothing but a success!

If you are a host, you post the place you have for rent, be it a room in or off your house or a separate apartment or even a house! Those who are traveling type in the location they would like to go, and a map pops up with locations in that location and the nearby cities. Each location/host will have lengthy descriptions, pictures, and reviews from other travelers so you can get a feel for the host and their place. The first time we used the site was on our trip to Austria last year, when we rented an apartment that we and our friends shared for five days.

On this journey we rented a studio apartment in Munich and a room in someone’s house in Heidelberg. 

This was the studio apartment that we stayed at in Munich. Complete with a balcony, it was a great fit for us and inexpensive!

 

This method adds a new element of adventure because you are staying somewhere where the locals live. You’re not in a cookie cutter hotel room with the bland walls and common place water colored pictures above the beds. Each location offers you a host of personal experiences that a hotel could not offer you. Furthermore, we find this option to be much cheaper than hotels, and we can also call or email the host to negotiate our arrival and departure times. The décor, furniture, and style of the locations we stay at also offer us a taste of the culture as seen by our host. Even though we browse through pictures before selecting where we will stay, it’s always a different experience than anticipated in person.

 

Heidelberg is a fantastic place! And being a city many hundreds of years old and steeped in history, coupled with a famous university, hiking trails, and castle ruins, it was a very pricey place to stay! Our most cost effective option would be to have a room in someone’s place. I had a slight hesitancy at first, since we previously had only had places entirely to ourselves. But we took the leap and it may be the only option we chose from now on!

The pinkish tinted room above was the one we stayed in at Heidelberg. Again, the decorations may not be something I would do in my own house, but it was fun for the experience! We had our own room and bathroom and balcony, and the entrance was off of their kitchen balcony so if we were to come home late at night we wouldn’t even disturb much of the family as their rooms were off a different hallway.

A fun staircase in our room!

Our host truly adopted us into her family for the day! When we first arrived, just after getting our own set of keys and dropping our bags in the room, she made us tea and we sat in her kitchen and had great conversations as we rested up from our drive there. She told us all we wanted to know about the city, where the best places to park for tourist destinations were, where to eat, and at what times. This is the sort of insider information you can only get from a local!

And small world that it is, she turned out to be an Italian woman who was born and raised less than an hour from where we currently live in Italy. As such, she spoke to our little one just like our Italian family do, and she doted on him like his grandparents.

 She is fluent in Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish. How fantastic is that? What a talent for languages. I am quite jealous and hope to reach fluency in as many languages some day. She has lived all over the world and had traveled much of California. She and her family are moving to France at the end of this year and she said we were welcome to come and visit her. I feel as though we made a friend for life, and at the very least another contact and connection in another country.

The balcony off of our room. We had a great view of the castle!

A closer view. Heidelberg was very quaint. We hope to go back there.

 

And the final picture is of our host lady crawling around with our little one. She loved him! And we fell in love with her and relished the experience to be adopted by her sweet family for our stay in Heidelberg. I highly recommend this method when you travel. You will gain experiences and connections I don’t believe can be found in a hotel.

 

Mimes and a dinner at Hofbräuhaus in Munich, Germany

We stayed at the beautiful park until the sun began to set, then we made our way to dinner at the Hofbräuhaus. 

Many of the buildings we passed had the year they were first built (or when the business first started) inscribed on the side.  As you can see in the picture here, in the bottom right it says “anno 1589”. That’s right, the Hofbräuhaus has been brewing and serving beer for over four centuries now! 

It was an interesting experience to be able to walk down the uneven stone streets and see when the buildings around us had been built. It made me feel almost as though I were walking through time to know that the lay of the area was roughly the same as it had been centuries prior, and that the food served in these buildings was the same food eaten by the people of that time as well!

 Photographer me was snapping pictures and walking at the same time, so I wasn’t really seeing where I was going, and my hubby and I nearly ran into a statue! “Whoa!” exclaimed my hubby as we nearly backed into a fountain statue.

 The statue was oddly placed right in front of the entrance to the Hofbräuhaus.  He glanced up at it and then turned to me, “I almost thought it was real”. He chuckled and then continued on. I put down my camera and turned to take a picture of the fountain statue. It was of a worker man standing on a platform. It's coloring was an aged gold from head to toe, and he held a cup in his hands from which water poured out into the bowl below him. However it couldn’t be a statue as the arm, which held the cup, moved slowly from side to side and the head would occasionally tilt and turn. A machine then? How peculiar. I stared up at its face and my jaw dropped open. “Honey, it is real!” I exclaimed! I watched him move. His movements were not entirely smooth; he jittered as he mimicked how a machine might move. “He’s a mime!” my husband declared. And my DH was quite right. It was indeed a mime, and I thought a most excellent one at that! He sent us a wink as he heard that we had figured him out. I was in awe. One other couple had stopped and was observing him, however aside from them and us, everyone passed him by without a second glance. I gave my camera to my hubby and asked if he would take my picture with the first mime I have ever met. Naturally hubby obliged and I ran to stand next to the mime. The mime made a series of unusual faces at me, and instinctively I held out my hand. He then turned and poured water into my hand. That got people’s attention! Very quickly a crowd gathered and all were observing the mime move. Other people began to take pictures with him and a bald man requested that he pour water on his head! After my hubby took the photos, I dug through my pockets and pulled out the euro coins I had on hand and placed them in a box in front of the mime (a box that nearly blended in with his statue self!). I wish I had had more than a few dollars to give him; we found him to be very impressive! (If anyone is interested, here is his fb page: AlexStatue)

 

After a significantly sized crowd had gathered and began to clog up the street, we departed and entered the Hofbräuhaus. When I asked my hubby what some of the things he most wanted to get out of our vacation were, excellent German food was at the top of his list, just under relaxation. So for my hubby (and myself), this dinner was a highly anticipated event. We were overwhelmed when we first walked in. It was a very large restaurant, though it didn’t look it at first, as it was divided into many sections, but after observing the many paths, which led to further rooms or tucked away cubbies, I began to realize it was a very large restaurant, and it was packed with people. All of the tables and benches were wooden, the high walls and ceilings painted with ornate German designs, the staff dressed in period attire, and a live folk band performed Bavarian music (with large mugs of beer at their feet!).

Unsure if we should seat ourselves or wait for someone to seat us, I asked the nearest man dressed in Lederhosen. “Excuse me,” I began, “Should we seat ourselves or should we wait for someone to seat us?” The man gave me a smile and replied, “I will seat you, but you’ll have to leave your boyfriend behind” giving a nod to my DH, who was still in the entryway with our LO taking in the scene around us. “Ah, thank you.” I replied. He gave a nod as I left to tell my hubby we were to choose whichever table suited us.

We walked past the steinvault – an area with locked cubbies where loyal drinkers could keep their steins safe – and past a very large bar before we found a tucked away corner that met our desires. A kind waiter in Lederhosen took our orders, brought a chair for the baby, and even toys to keep the baby occupied while we awaited our food. 

 

While we waited for our food, we read the backs of our menus (we were given an English translation), which gave us the history of the place. Among other things, it told us that back in the 1500’s, beer was not regarded as a beverage but as a fundamental food. We also discovered that the building we were in had been redesigned and rebuilt several times due to everything from bombs to fire to necessary expansion.

 You can see our drinks in the picture at upper left there. The food we ordered did not disappoint. My husband ordered a roasted knuckle of pork and received that large hunk of meat you see at right.

Most dishes seemed to come with a sticky dumpling and a form of sauerkraut. I had the pork and dumpling as seen below (and yes, I did not conform to my usual diet while on this trip. I did the last time we went to Germany three months ago and this time I was eager to sample their cuisine).

My dish of roasted pork slices with crackling in homemade gravy.

For dessert we shared this apple strudel from the Hofbräuhaus bakery!

We were so full that it took some effort to squeeze this tasty morsel into our stomachs. 

The vanilla sauce it was in was particularly delicious. Seeing that we enjoyed it so much, the waiter brought a whole bowl of the vanilla sauce over. We liberally poured it onto our strudel to increase it's deliciousness factor. 

 

Unlike Italy, Germans do tip, and it is customary to round up to the nearest ten. After polishing off our plates and drinks, we departed for the gift shop were we purchased memento mugs, including a small one we intend to put on the Christmas tree, along with our other souvenirs from our travels.

The dinner proved to be very fulfilling and a grand experience to conclude our first day in Germany. If you ever happen to get the chance to go to Munich, we  certainly recommend this place to you!

Englischer Garten, München

After many hours journeying by car, we were eager to stretch our legs and explore the city of Munich. We set off on foot to the train station, where we purchased a ticket and boarded a train headed to the Englischer Garten, or, the English Gardens. These gardens are very famous as they are one of the largest urban gardens in the world (larger than central park in the states as well).

On our journey there, we noted that the Germans are a very active people. Everywhere we went there were people involved in recreation. Numerous people rode bikes, and the city was well designed to accommodate them. Aside from their own spacious biking lane, they had liberal parking spaces and even special spaces in the cross walks designated solely for bikers.

Once we reached the park, the open fields were covered in people enjoying the outdoors and involved in every manner of recreational activity you could think of. 

Our LO crawled all over the fields and attempted to make friends with all the dogs. The pup seen at left was going crazy for the bubbles his owners were blowing for him. See the horse drawn carriage in the back meandering around the lake? It was so quaint there!

After leaving one of the fields, we strolled the dirt paths past the ducks and treat shacks, and over wooden bridges past the musicians with their accordions. German ladies pushed their babies in prams, and lovers embraced on park benches. I promise you it was as idyllic as it sounds. We stayed there until dark and couldn’t refrain from continually commenting on how thankful we were to have been able to stop here.

The park as the sun began to set. Idyllic and gorgeous! Note the Monopteros at the top of the hill.

This is easily one of my favorite pictures captured that day! (This and the one right above this, it's a close call and they are very different styles) After a walk to the top of a hill, we relaxed on the steps of the Monopteros and took in the view of the park.

"A Monopteros is a circular colonnade supporting a roof but without any walls"- Wikipedia

The park’s construction began in 1789 and has since been added to and rearranged to make it the lovely oasis it provides the people of Munich currently.

My inner photographer was thoroughly excited to have new locations to practice capturing.

This was the view below us from the Monopteros atop the hill.

Aside from the spacious grassy expanses for recreation, the park also offers scores of playgrounds for children, nearly 50 miles of paths and trails, a lake, beer gardens, Chinese tea-houses, a multitude of fountains, flowers, and much much more that we didn't get to explore! We agreed that this was just what we needed after our nearly six-hour drive to Munich, and the relaxing adventure was the perfect start to our vacation.