München Christkindlmarkt, Deutschland

Who needs a turkey on Thanksgiving Day?
Not us!
We ventured into Munich for the first time, and spent our first Thanksgiving holiday abroad eating brats, rubbing shoulders with the locals, and sipping Glüwein. T'was a nice little getaway for a day. Not only did we finally experience Munich, we also had out first Christkindlmarkt experience, too!

Munich is pretty large, and it's also the state capital of Bavaria. There's plenty to do and see, and it's easy to kill daylight (and moonlight) there, too. Something around every corner; something for everyone.
Unfortunately, we were dealing with an attitude ridden child all day. It's easy to let a smartass nine year old kill fun time, but we decided to pay her no attention. Honestly, this kid KNOWS how to work one's nerves. She's too intelligent for her age, which ends up getting her into trouble. Trust me when I say that a nine year old girl can get under your skin by correcting your verbal grammar. It's possible. It happens.

Anyway, I did a ton of research before we headed to Munich. Again, we prefer to park in outdoor parking lots, in fear of getting stuck (literally stuck) inside of a tiny Parkhaus (garage). Finding outdoor carparks isn't as easy as it sounds. I scour google maps searching 'carpark', 'parken', 'parkplatz', etc, for a specific city. It took me awhile, but I finally found one in Munich the night before we left!
If you are ever in need of parking with a large car in Munich, you're welcome:
Parken unter Donnersberger Brücke über Richelstraße, 80634 München, Deutschland

NOTE that the above address is easily found on Google maps with your smart phone. My Garmin car GPS refused (I think because there isn't a listed street number). We set the Garmin to get us close enough, and once in the city, I used my phone to get to the exact location.

This parking lot is fully outdoor, covered, cheap (we paid 6€ for the day) and has LOTS of space! Oh, and some neat street art within it.

Now, this parking lot is not near the city center, and yes, I knew this ahead of time. It's actually located by a urban train station, or the S-bahn. I didn't necessarily want to park within the city center anyway. Even on a non-event day, city center driving is TERRIBLE, in any city around the globe. Especially when you drive a bus compared to the size of Euro spec vehicles. The streets around here weren't really made with huge Dodge cars in mind.

So we walked into the train station and purchased tickets from the machine. For 2 adults and four kids, we were able to get a "Partner Day pass" for 11.20€. Not shabby, and better than dealing with driving in circles just to find a parkplatz closer. On this Friday, the S-bahn from Donnersberger station ran every 12 or so minutes. We didn't wait long to jump on the next train. Four stops later, we hit Marienplatz, the main town square of Munich, and hopped off.

Notes about the train:
If you plan to take the S-bahn in/to any city in Germany, you will need to know what the ending point is for the train you plan to take. The trains here don't say northbound, southbound, etc,. They have 2 points, and everything in between.

Once off the train, we were underground, and followed signs that lead to Marienplatz, or ground level. Wow.

When you walk up the stairs, out of the underground station, you are suddenly smacked with sights of every building you have ever seen posted in picture form on Pinterest! It was nuts. I didn't know what to look at first!

I am a self-dubbed eratic traveler. Sort of. I know what I want to see, and I stop at nothing to see it. I will head through main streets and randomly take detours through alleys, construction, parks, and bike pathways to find what I want.

But the erratic part is that I stop along the way to take photos of randoms, and sometimes get lost while doing so. This happened on the way to my next on-foot destination in Munich: Asam's Church (also known as Church of St. Johann Nepomuk). It is the gaudiest church I have seen yet! Intricate and loud baroque architecture. The outside is squashed between houses/apartments, unlike any other church I have seen here. Generally, churches are free-standing, or their own building. I thought that to be odd about Asam's. As for the inside artwork and architecture, see for yourself below.

When we were stepping out of Asam's, my daughter noticed that the man carved into the church door wanted a handshake

We stopped for brats at the end of the street and walked around the mini Christmas market there. I can buy brats at my local German supermarket and grill them myself, but there's something about it when someone else makes them for you. SO GOOD. We eat them every time we go out to a local city.

My next feat was to go back in the direction we came from and find St. Peter's Church. This cathedral is not very different than others we have seen elsewhere, except for one HUGE thing: It has a jeweled skull and skeleton that is featured in Paul Koudounaris's book titled Heavenly Bodies: Cult treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs.

As soon as the first article about Paul's book hit the media in 2013, a friend who knows my love of the world's oddities and grotesque randoms shared it with me. I was in awe. To finally see one for myself was a major thing! After all, my minor is in Mortuary Science. May explain a few character traits (or flaws).

The saddest part about my day was that the skeleton and skull were located behind locked bars. I knew they'd be encased within glass, based on my research, but I didn't know about the bars. It was hard to get crystal clear and properly lit photos of them. Oh well. But I am glad I tracked them down! There are a lot more all over Europe, many in Germany, so maybe another will make for a better shot in my future? I have another interesting human skull photo soon to come in this post, but I had no idea that I would encounter it...

We went outside of St Peter's only to find the bell tower entrance. For a small fee per person, we climbed all 350+ stairs and took in the sights of Munich from high in the sky! Worth the endless, steep stairs.

The green little roofs are Christmas Market vendor booths! And the big tree in front of the building is the official Munich Christmas tree. It wasn't lit up yet because this just happened to be opening day. They light the tree with a ceremony in the evening of Christkindlemarkt day one.

I had one last destination on my Munich list for the day before roaming about the Christmas Market. Our plan was to see all of the touristy things first, during daylight, and then to do the market last.

From St. Peter's, we walked to the Münchner Residenz, or better known as the Munich Residence Palace. The outside of it is actually quite ugly, and not at all the glitz and glamour that you'd expect of a palace. Hmmm.
We went inside anyway, paid €14 to tour the Residenz Museum (kids are free, 7€ per adult). We skipped the treasury and theater tour. I'll say this, once inside the palace, you forget how ugly the outside is. The outdoor facade is a terrible indication of what the palace is like indoors!

The Marie Antoinette connection. Read the text from the photo above this one.

The inside of the palace has it's own chapel. There's so much detail that your eyes start to hurt. A good hurt, though! Within the chapel, you can find an interesting vault: It has a collection of shiny royal objects, but in addition to shiny things, there's human bones, or fragments of bones, in nearly every glass case. Odd. I'll have to research this more on a rainy day, but they are most likely bone's that were once inside important people.

Visiting this palace makes me really anxious to get to Versailles next month. I bet I'll shit my pants while gazing upon the disgusting amount of wealth that Versailles has to offer in comparison to this one in Munich. The crappiest part about the Munich Residenz is that is was bombed during WWII by...you guessed it...America. Much of the furniture you see inside (or in my photos) is borrowed from France. Many of the rooms were redone in the 1980s, as well as construction on bomb devastated parts.

I wanted to hit up Nymphenburg Palace in Munich too, but we decided to save it for another day. We snapped a few dorky pictures outside of the palace, and then headed to Marienplatz to walk about the Christkindlmarkt.