Bike Tour in Munich

Our second and last day in Munich we went on a bike tour. But before that we went to watch the Glockenspiel do its thing. It is a bell tower with a clock on it. Three times a day it chimes and re-enacts two stories from the 16th century. One is a wedding and the second is a battle. There were at least 200 hundred people in the square including several tour groups and a school group watching the performance. I was a little disappointed, a lot of the time music played but the statues did not move. When the statues did move it was very slowly, the whole thing was a little boring. But at least i can say i have seen it now!
After watching this we went off to find our tours meeting spot and started the bike tour. It was pretty overcast which must have turned a lot of people off going on a tour because there were only about 15 people in our group and apparently they usually have about 40.
The tour was really good, we went with Mikes Bike Tours (we booked this through Busabout) and they live up to their good reputation. They had new bikes with nice comfy seats and breaks and peddles that worked so i was happy!

Our tour guide

The tour started with a run down on the history of Munich and then once everyone had a bike we rode to Hofbrauhaus (where me and Ewen went the day before) and learnt a bit about that (i wrote about that in the last post so wont bore you again). we then rode around several more sights in central Munich including seeing a church with a completely white interior
some government buildings, the national theatre (which has an upside dome in its ceiling used to catch rain water in case the building ever caught on fire. funnily enough the building did catch on fire but it was in winter and the rain water in the indented dome was frozen. much of the building had to be replaced after this fire), the beautiful Peace Angel monument and the Maximilianeum (the Bavarian Parliament building).
We were shown some lion statues that the locals touch as they pass them, there are four in a row and it is considered lucky to touch 3 of them, but you must never touch 4 because that would be greedy.

This is the Saatskanzlei (State Chancellery) which was opposite the Hofgarten.

We also went into the Hofgarten which was destroyed during World War II and was rebuilt partially in its original form (from the 17th century) and partly influenced by the 19th century. It is a very popular place for locals to go and listen to buskers however not just anyone can busk in this garden. there are three people in charge and you have to perform for them and all three have to agree that you are good enough to busk here. it is kind of like Australian Idol i suppose.

A busker who made the cut

We went for a ride through the English Gardens which were beautiful (and massive - 900 acres) apart from the naked section. on one side of the river that runs through the park is the naked area where mainly old men lie around naked while a few meters away on the other side of the river families picnic like everything is completely normal. we saw completely naked people standing around having conversations. they probably thought we were the weird ones wearing our clothes.

Don't worry that guy had pants on

We had lunch at a beer garden next to the Chinese Tower in the garden (well away from the naked men).
i tried a Radler (beer mixed with lemonade) and only made it through about a quarter of my glass (it was 500mls) before hating the taste so much i couldn't drink any more. we also got a giant pretzel to share and each tried some traditional German sausages.
After lunch we rode back through the garden this time stopping at the surfing section. This is an artificial wave in the river that expert surfers attempt to surf on. it was pretty crazy watching guys surf in the middle of a park in Munich in a river!
This was pretty much the end of the tour. That afternoon me and Ewen walked back to the river to see some rapids we had ridden past but not stopped at earlier. we sat down on the pebble stones for a while, Ewen skipped stones and i went for a paddle.
we left after doing a bit of exploring and me stepping into the river with my shoes on, we were trying to cross a stream balancing on rocks and i missed one.
after this we went and had dinner at another beer hall where a waiter got cross at us because he misunderstood our order. Ewen ordered a beer for himself and a lemonade for me but the waiter bought out a beer mixed with lemonade. when we told him that's not what we wanted he got really cross and said what was he supposed to do about it and that now he would have to pay for it. in the end we got the drinks we wanted but Ewen made sure to smell and thoroughly inspect his before drinking it.