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A Weekend in Munich

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Our eldest son Jude (9) expressed an interest in going on a plane around about the time our middle son was born and we agreed to take him. Our third son came along in the meantime and we had to keep putting it off as we moved house and I moved jobs, etc. Once we got settled in the new house we kept our promise and booked a weekend away. I’ve long ago used up my KLM miles so flying three of us out of Norwich was going to be too expensive. So we decided to fly from Stanstead with Easyjet and we decided to go to Munich as I spent some time there in the summer of 2006 and knew it reasonably well. I also know a good hotel there.

I’ve heard lots of bad things about "London" airports and low cost flyers. However, Stanstead was great! No queues and friendly, helpful polite staff. Actually, there was one queue for passport control on the way back, but we were through in about 15 minutes. I couldn’t have asked for more. Easyjet was the same. Very polite staff and very helpful. There wasn’t the mad rush to find seats together on the plane or any of the things I’d heard about. We’ll certainly use them again. After landing we got the S-Bahn to the Holiday Inn just outside the centre of Munich.

On the Saturday we decided to get the S-Bahn over to the main station in Munich and walk back through the old town. I hadn’t really done this when I was there before. The buildings are magnificent, including the churches. We had a look around the Museum of Munich which had a couple of models of the city. One showed the old two level wall that used to  completely surround the city.

On the Sunday we decided to go to the English Garden on the tram. Unfortunately the trams weren’t running all the way to the English Garden for some reason, so we had to walk most of the way. The english garden is a large expanse of grass and trees with bandstand on a hill and lots of restaurants and little shops hidden away. We had a traditional German meal in a small restaurant in the centre of the garden. It was at this point I realised I’d been there before when my German colleagues had taken me out for dinner and more beer than I could drink these days! After lunch we wandered out of the garden and back into Munch on the underground and then on the S-Bahn out to the airport.

I could quite happily live in Munich. We’ve certainly got a taste for weekend breaks in foreign countries now. Prague is next.

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