August 11, 2019

Alain, Matthias and Kent at the beer garden

English Garden Pagoda Style Tower

All of us at the Beer Garden

This morning we had breakfast with Alain and Matthias at our hotel before checking out. The boys had driven from Stuttgart so they had a car and drove us to the English Garden for a walk and beverages at the Chinese Tower. The Tower is a multi-level structure that serves as the centerpiece for one of the cities most beloved beer gardens. The beer garden is the second largest in Munich, offering over 7,000 open-air seats at tables and benches surrounding the tower. During good weather, the tower houses a band on the second floor playing local tunes.

After a visit to the park the boys drove us to the airport Hilton where we were to meet up with our group for the trip to Bolzano, Italy. We arrived about 2:00pm and had to wait a short while for a room to be ready. Christine meet up with us in the lobby and helped speed up the process of getting our room.

At 7:00pm we met up with our group of 20 including Kent and Christine Zimmerman, our program managers for the next couple of weeks. The group consists of mostly Americans from California to Virginia, and a couple of Canadians We walked a short distance to a local Bavarian restaurant for dinner. We started with cheese platters and wine followed by suckling pig with potato dumplings, pork knuckles, potato salad, salmon and more. This was followed by more drinks, deep fried and sugar-coated apple slices, ice cream, plum and apricot dumplings. All delicious but way too much to eat.