Tammy Trip Reports | Day 2 – Or was it still day 1? It’s hard to say!

18 Sep Day 2 – Or was it still day 1? It’s hard to say!

Posted at 18:43h in Uncategorized by Tammy 0 Comments

0 Likes

Day 2 – Or was it still day 1? It’s hard to say!

We walked off the plane and breezed through customs. There was a group of about 10 of us there for the ABD. They had signs with our names and we gathered up and introduced ourselves.

We also grabbed our luggage and followed the guy with the sign out to a few cars that were waiting for us.

We got in our assigned cars and we were off!

At the hotel!

It was beautiful inside!

Sadly, but not surprisingly, our room was not ready! They promised to text us when it was and we walked over to the ABD welcome table.

Our guides for the week – Alica and Melanie were waiting for us with a warm welcome! They gave us some opening day instructions, their contact information, suggested some good places for us to walk around that afternoon, and gave us a meeting time for our opening reception and dinner.

They also gave us some welcome swag!

We devoured that chocolate and it was delicious.

We got out and walked through the beautiful city of Munich.

It was rather hot. Spoiler alert – this is a theme that would continue during the week.

First sweaty selfie:

We ended up in a huge department store that I can’t remember the name of. It was fun to walk around. There was (not surprisingly) Bayern Munich merchandise everywhere!

And a T-Rex!

I told Stephen to look like he was being eaten by the T-Rex. This is not quite what I envisioned. Lol

We went back out to the heat and walked some more through the cute little streets.

We decided we only wanted something light for lunch so we went in a bakery. I wanted a pretzel with ham, but somehow ended up with one with pimento cheese. My sweet husband ate mine and I ate his plain one.

Frequent pretzels would also become a theme of the week! When in Germany!

I got my Starbucks mug!

We stopped in the Disney store. I was hoping for a German Mickey with the city on his feet like I got in London, Paris and Dublin. Because they are adorable! But this Mickey was dressed like Mickey!

This little guy was dressed like I was wanting! But he didn’t have anything saying Munich on him! I could have bought him in Epcot!

I was torn for a quite a while on which one to buy, if either and ultimately I couldn’t decide! So I decided to wait. I didn’t make it back, so I ended up with neither!

We also stopped in the beautiful little church.

Finally we decided we couldn’t walk anymore and started back to the hotel. Our hotel was in an amazing location, we were within walking distance of everything!

When we were just a block or so away, we got the text that our room was ready. Perfect timing!

We took quick showers and I broke my first day on international travel rule, and took a little nap. I figured I was tired enough that I would still sleep that night.

At some point the hotel dropped off a little snack for us!

Then it was time to get ready for our reception and official walking tour of Munich!

I’ve got my lanyard!

I finally broke out my camera out of the suitcase. So the rest of the report will be a combination of my camera, phone, AND pictures that our guides took. They took a ton of pictures all week, and gave us a link at the end!

We met in the lobby and they showed us to a room where we had our welcome reception. We were offered drinks and finger foods and then we went around the room and introduced ourselves and said what we were most looking forward to.

Here was a map of our week:

We also met our local guide. ABD has two guides that stay with you all week, and a local guide in every city you visit. We had Michael.

Cathy had told me about Michael, but I still wasn’t fully prepared for the awesomeness that was Michael. Michael was one of the most entertaining and engaging people I have ever met. We were so lucky to get him for three days. I mean so lucky. I can’t properly explain how informative he was, while still keeping it fun. He taught us things, he made us laugh, and later in the week he made us cry.

There wasn’t a single person in our group who didn’t fall in love with him and missed him when we said goodbye.

After a little introduction to Munich from Michael, we were off on our official walking tour of Munich!

We made it to Marienplatz. Stephen and I had seen some of these same things earlier today, but we sure did learn a lot more this time!

Michael – keeping us informed.

Michael talking, we are listening.

Most cities we visited had these super cool little 3D models of the town with braille.

Michael and Alica guiding us!

We stopped at a shrine to Michael Jackson!

Michael Jackson lived in this Munich hotel for a long while. He loved Germany and apparently was planning on moving there before his untimely death.

We cut through a shopping area:

This was a super cool sculpture that I do not remember the story of, but Michael did say the light hits it once a day in just the right way and it’s spectacular.

When you are on an Adventures by Disney tour, you don’t have to plan a thing. Not where the bathrooms are, when you’ll get a snack, water, anything. The guides have it all! And here, just when we needed it, they had water for us! Cute water!

We stopped in this beautiful church:

I’m in this picture, so clearly I did not take it! Our guides took pictures all week, which was awesome!

We stopped at this area for a few minutes while Michael gave us the history. After taking power, Hitler apparently turned this site, the Feldherrnhalle, into a memorial to the 16 Nazis that were killed here when they tried to take over the Bavarian State. Passerbys were required to hail the site with the Nazi salute.

I couldn’t get a picture of it, but Michael had a picture with him of people walking by and saluting exactly where we were standing. It was quite impactful.

People who did not want to salute, started detouring through this street behind the Feldherrnhalle to keep from getting imprisoned or worse for not saluting.

We were late for dinner at that point, although we could have listened to Michael all night. Our guide Melanie made him stop talking and we were off to eat!

We ate in the Ratskeller, which does not sound good to Americans, ha!, but it actually means it’s a restaurant or bar in the basement of the city hall!

Here was our private room:

Dinner was family style and there was sooooo much food. Just when we thought we had finished the main course, they brought out all new stuff!

More pretzels!

Here we are with my Coke Zero in a wine glass! So fancy.

Dessert!

We had a great time getting to know people at dinner. It’s amazing the friendships you form on an ABD!

After dinner Melanie and Alica talked to us for a while. First they gave pins to and recognized anyone who had done an ABD before.

Then they gave us our first pin of the week!

They also told us they had changed up the schedule for the next two days. We were going to Neuschwanstein the next day, and not doing our big dinner until the next night! They were worried about the stores being closed and us not getting enough time to shop, so they thought they were helping us.

Oops. Originally we had that third night free, so Stephen bought us tickets to go see Bayern Munich play! Wuh oh.

They finished up and gave everyone our meeting time for tomorrow and we all filed out to walk back to the hotel. We stopped to tell Melanie about our dilemma. She felt so bad! She said she would think and figure out what we could do and let us know!

Walking back –