Since studying German a bit in high school, Munich has always been a city I’ve wanted to experience. We started around 9am this morning and took the train to Munich Central Station. It quickly reminded me of Penn Station in NYC because of the hustle and bustle before we even went above ground. We all gathered by the Glockenspiel and watched it go off at noon, this was incredible to see because you can tell just by the amount of people gathered to watch it, it is a massive tourist attraction. After this, we parted ways and headed out for about 4 hours of free time in the city. 

A bunch of us decided to hit some cool sights, then grab food, then finish with some highly anticipated shopping. First, we walked through the Munich Residenz, which is the largest palace in Germany and although we didn’t see the inside, we got to see the surrounding gardens which were beautiful and very peaceful compared to the rest of the crowded city. 

After that, we were eager to see the Eisbachwelle, which is basically a standing wave right in the center of Munich. It is a top tourist attraction to watch river surfing, which looked nearly imporssible. You would never expect to see something like this in such a large city like Munich, or honestly Germany in general. 

We headed to the world famous Hofbräuhaus for lunch and it was huge. We figured it would be primarily tourists eating here, which was definitely true. We sat outside in the garden area and it started to rain a little bit, but then the sun came out and it was a perfect way to energize and refuel us for the rest of the day. For lunch we all tried authentic dishes and I got pork belly, which sounded questionable but was very delicious. We had about an hour to do some shopping before our guided city tour and I definitely spent some money…

Our guided tour was great, it was really nice to see historical landmarks and hear about different events that happen in the city throughout the year. The Beer Garden in the city market was a really cute spot where people go to meet up with friends. Something I really appreciate about Munich is the architecture and the city sky line. The amount of people and specific stores are very city-like, but the architecture is so old and diverse which makes it feel smaller than it is. We ended the day at a burger restaurant which was delicious. At this point we were all exhausted and personally, I walked over 30,000 steps and I think most of us can relate! This has been my favorite day so far because I felt like I was able to experience more of the culture first-hand!