Europe - Day 4

Guten Tag!

Today we saw Munich in the rain. But rain doesn't scare us... well, not much at least ;)

sights driving into Munich

a little bit of rain today

Our main goal was the Deutsches Museum! The largest museum of its kind in the WORLD! As it turns out, too large for us to see it all in a day, but that is ok.

It is a little over 30 minutes drive from where we are staying into Munich. And we got out a bit later than planned, but ultimately it all worked out. We found our parking garage and walked to the museum. (Pro-tip: buy your ticket ahead of time online. This saved us having to wait in a line that wrapped around the building. We aren't pros... but the oldest has been saying that ("pro-tip") lately and it's worn off on me.)

This place is massive and it's almost hard to know where to start. We ended up going down to start and found ourselves immersed in an amazing exhibit on mining.

down into the mine

lifesize figurines are throughout 

even salt mines

This was really, really cool. We ended up going through this somewhat faster than the people around us as not much was posted in English.

Example of a sign/label with English translation

This happened at most of the older exhibits in the museum - the main paragraph or paragraphs talking about the item were in German and then the English would a short paragraph below... but more often it was a single sentence in English. And in several exhibits there was no English to be found... so we deduced the best we could. [Editor's note: As I mentioned before, I read German well enough to get by, but there is way too much unfamiliar vocabulary with something like an exhibit on mining to really read the info. The newer exhibits all have full info in both German and English.]

Deciding what to see after lunch

History of flight exhibit

Exhibit on pharmaceuticals and the production of medicines

in an old style apothecary

View of the museum courtyard

Is it a Mer-man? 

A look back at the Museum as we left

Swan!

Maypole in the town center, where food vendors are set up, even in the rain.

All sporting our Costco packable rain coat - go team Costco! Hmmm? They don't look thrilled that I made them stop in the rain to take a picture. Note to self.... don't do that to your family. 

A few last sights as we drove out of Munich

The rest of the day was planned for our last hurrah at the pools. Plus we need to pack.... we can't have too much fun.

We ate dinner at the park and got our last float/slide/swim in for our stay. Hubby hit the sauna while the kids went to bed and I got a chance to do a little blogging.

In all honesty it was a roller coaster of a day. I don't think it was the rain or lack of sleep... we have all been sleeping well.  We have had a few bumps along the trip... some literally - We have two scratches, two blisters and one doozey of a bruise between us. But also some struggles finding a variety of foods. Some timing hiccups, etc.
Our young man has a hard time when things don't go as planned. We actually have a few new strategies for this, on this trip. We are doing a punch card for when things don't go as planned... five punches and we get something special. As well as a backup plan Bingo card... with specific things that could go wrong. A Bingo will also yield something special... to be determined by parents.
This has helped him so far. A few things he was able to roll with much easier, knowing they were on the Bingo card. Our goal is for him to accept that things don't always go as planned. It's ok, both to be disappointed by it, and to keep moving.

Based on the amount of road construction, we should have made that the Free Space. Next time ;)

So far we have filled one punch card. Today when I went to Starbucks to get a Munich Mug, we all got treats for that punch card. And 5 spots on our bingo card are filled (not including the free space).
Two of those were today.

But even with a bumpy, rainy day the kids both say it was a "fine" day. From tween/teens "fine" isn't bad at all ;)

Auf Wiedersehen!