Prague Day 1: (Munich --> Prague Commuting Day)

Norm:

We are headed off to the second destination of our travels - the beautiful city of Prague. I was actually quite looking towards seeing this city, after hearing about how historic, beautiful and fun the city was. Unfortunately, we had quite a long commute ahead of us. 

We shared a passenger carriage with these Americans from California. I had started reading the Game of Thrones book in anticipation of getting ahead of the next season of the television show. Unfortunately, Mandy did not bring any source of entertainment on the journey, so she was bored out of her mind for most of the journey. 

We arrived in Prague and found our place fairly easily. We were pleasantly surprised about how nice everyone in Prague was and was offered help for the public transport by the locals. Since we got in fairly late, we only had time to go catch a late dinner. From the suggestion of our AirBnB landlord, we originally wanted to got to Sansho, an Asian fusion restaurant. Unfortunately, there were no spots available (but we did make reservations to go back there the next day!). Ultimately, we went to a restaurant called Al Forno, which was also suggested by our AirBnB landlord. Coincidentally, I was craving an authentic pizza and this place really did deliver. Also realized how delicious Budweiser is on this side of the world.

Delicious mozzarella, olives and cherry tomatoes 

Beer + Pizza = Happy Norman 

Tomorrow is action-packed day. Stay tuned!

Munich Day 4: BMW World

Mandy:

Our last day in Munich was spent at Viktualenmarkt, BMW Welt, and Nymphenburg Palace. We bought another round of fresh fruit smoothies and had soup at the market. My Worldlens app came in handy today to translate the soup menu to figure out that they had chicken noodle soup and a sausage soup for Norm. After that we headed to the BMW Welt to check out some new BMW models. We wanted to see the BMW plant which is part of the BMW Museum tour but it was sold out for today. I think that was for the better because after the BMW Welt we were BMW'ed out already. Since we were close to Nymphenburg Palace and we had a metro day pass, we paid a visit to the palace. Unfortunately the palace and the garden were very underwhelming since we have visited many palaces previously such as Versaille in Paris and the Phnom Penh Royal Palace. We ended our night at a local burger joint right by our apartment that turned out to be very delicious and we got to catch the end of the Belgium vs Algeria game (Belgium won). Tomorrow we head out to Prague!! =)

Soup and smoothie for breakfast

chicken noodle soup and sausage soup

vroom vroom

 

Unstoppableeeeeee

i8

Nymphenburg Palace

Hipster menu 1

Hipster menu 2

Big Buddha Cheese Burger

Californian Burger

Munich Day 3: Germany vs Portugal

Mandy:

We started off the morning by meeting our Munich Greeter Yvonne at the Haidhausen neighbourhood for an authentic German breakfast. Yvonne is a very friendly IT freelance journalist and she taught us a lot about the Munich culture. She explained that although Hofbrauhaus has become very touristy, 50% of the visitors are actually still locals because of organized daily/weekly meetings called stammgäste. Each reserved table has a wooden painted flag hanging on top of the table. Yvonne also showed us 2 traditional Munich houses that dates back to the 19th century. The small and short houses were homes for families of around 15 people =\

Delicious breakfast

19th century Munich houses

Couple photo by the Isar river

Our greeter Yvonne

We decided to part with our greeter to go to Viktualienmarkt to buy some snacks for our trip to the English Garden. I was surprised to see a fruit stall had lychee, longan, jackfruit and durian! The durian was 18 euros a kilo though, lol. We bought some raspberries, strawberries, fresh fruit smoothies, post cards, Muji pens and we were off to the English Garden! We were short on time since we were meeting Andreas to catch the Germany vs Portugal world cup game so we didn't really explore the English Garden. We found a spot and chilled out. Two locals were sunbathing but it really wasn't that hot, haha. 

fruits galore

Beautiful day at the park

Norm lounging as always

Mandy eating fruit like always

strawberry

Writing to my lucky friends

Our plan was to meet Andreas and arrive at the largest beer garden, Hirschgarten, before 6pm to get a seat before the football game. Hirschgarten is the largest beer garden in Germany and possibly the world. It seats 8000 people but we still could not find a spot!! Germans really take their football seriously. Alas, we couldn't find a spot and had to take the metro back to the city to find a pub that had room for us. By the time we sat down, Germany already scored 2 goals but at least we saw them score another 2 and won the game! =) 

8000 Germans....

....8000+ litres of beer

schnitzel

Munich Day 2: Dachau Memorial

Mandy:

We learned that very few things are open on Sundays in Germany. Therefore, we decided to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. On the way there, we realized that the older generation of Germans do not speak English and when you ask the train station attendees for directions they just nod their head to whatever you say. Luckily we caught on and figured out our way or else we would've been late for the 11am guided tour. 

The guide at Dachau was an older German lady who is very passionate and knowledgeable of the Holocaust. Similar to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Dachau is now very serene. I cannot imagine what it was like 60 years ago. We learned that Dachau was the very first concentration camp in Germany and all the other concentration camps followed the same concept. Dachau was a lot bigger than I imagined. Most of the buildings were purposely destroyed except for a few. The remnants of the buildings is a powerful image for visitors.

Remnants of the first building 

Prison cells 

'

"work makes (you) free"

After a very educational visit to Dachau, we went back to Marienplatz to lighten the mood. By then we were very hungry and ate the first thing we saw which was of course.... sausages! After our bellies were full we wandered to a parliament building that we walked by with Andreas the night before. However, this time it was sunny and lots of locals were sitting on the grass chilling out. We joined the locals for a bit and decided to visit the Pinakothek der Modern museum since museums in Munich are 1 euro on Sundays. The museum was more fun and interesting than we expected but that's probably because it was modern art which is more playful and fun.

Sausage in Marienplatz

Snow cones by shaving a huge block of ice!

Candid photo

Norm's fave painting

Dishes illustrating strange ways to inflict pain

this is art?

palms palms palms

look at this! hehe

For dinner we went to Andreas' "best restaurant in Munich" called Anh Thu Vietnamese restaurant. My family and I had really good Vietnamese food in Paris so I was excited to try it in Germany as well. To our surprise, the Vietnamese restaurant was a lot fancier than the Viet restos we're used to in Toronto and elsewhere. We went there on a Sunday around 8pm and the resto was fully reserved except for the patio. We ordered pho (only 1 choice and it was an app!), a platter of different rolls, and the bun cha. The pho was not good but the rolls and bun cha were pretty good. The Viet food in Paris was definitely way better!

Disappointing pho

Bun chaaaa

Guten Tag!

Mandy:

Guten Tag! Normandy finally reunited after 4 weeks in Munich =) Norm had a long flight from Toronto to Iceland to Munich and I came via train from Strasbourg. Our first impression of Germany is that Munich is similar to Ottawa and Berlin is similar to Toronto. Munich has a population of approximately 1 million people, the streets are dead after 7pm when all the tourists go home, there are a lot of parks, and the people living in Munich are generally older and are very active (ie. riding bikes and jogging). 

Soon after we settled in our eccentric airbnb apartment, we met up with Norm's LSE friend Andreas at Sendlingertor Platz gate which is very close to us. We walked around Marienplatz which is Munich's central square and ended up at Hofbrauhaus for a few drinks and a snack. Hofbrauhaus is a very famous beer hall and thus very touristy. We were lucky to have Andreas there to order for us because these poor hkers sitting beside us kept getting ignored by the rude waitor. After that we kept exploring Munich by foot and ended up at another restaurant for some German food. After dinner we continued to wander for another few hours and it kept getting colder and colder! I hope we brought enough warm clothes =\

Hofbrauhaus

1 litre beers!

cheers!

Pork and more beer

Europe Bound Round 2!

Mandy:

Bonjour mes amis! Normandy is in Europe once again... and during the World Cup too! I started my Euro trip with my parents, Fannie, and Rony in Paris over a week ago. It was everyone's first time in Europe except for me so I was very excited for everyone to visit Paris because it is one of my favourite cities in the world. The food, the people, the sights, and sounds are all amazing. Norm couldn't join us for that part of the trip because he was studying/writing the CFA level III exam. Hopefully that will be his last exam ever in life =)

We booked an airbnb apartment in Paris for the 5 of us and it was great. The apartment wasn't too big but it had everything we needed. It was a typical Parisian apartment with no elevator and creaking floors. It was 5 minutes away from Chatelet Les Halles metro station and close to a lot of stores and restaurants so my dad would wander the streets on his own in the morning and at night. Since I have been to Paris before, I was basically a tour guide and planned out each stop and figured out how to get from one place to another.

Eating breakfast/lunch before heading out for the day

The only group photo of us. Eating at Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie (Mine and Fannie's second time there and Norm's fave Paris restaurant!)

After 5 fun filled days in Paris, my family was off to Rome to go on a cruise and I was off to Strasbourg, France for 2 days before meeting up with Norm in Germany. I chose Strasbourg because it is a small town with a beautiful cathedral and it was on the way to Munich from Paris. Since it was a small town it wasn't very difficult to find my way around but I was starting to get really tired of carrying my huge backpack around. Also, travelling alone is so lonely and I don't think I would do it again if I had a choice. 

My second favourite cathedral after the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

View of the square

My first official dining alone experience. Trying the Alsatian choucroute (not very good)

Something We Asian Got

Petite France

View from the top of the cathedral

Alsatian tarte flambe (very yummy)

My next stop was Munich to finally meet Norm!! :)