Welllll, we got up fairly early on the 17th, had an awesome breakfast (with assorted eggs, cheeses, meat, cereal, bread). Of course, both of us had to have some coffee. Scott also put down some orange juice and water to help wash down the chewy granola cereal he was gnawing on...horse cereal is what he called it. We checked out of our hotel and headed for the subway near the cathedral. I managed to buy tickets but the options were so confusing - I'm not sure I bought the right ones. Navigating the subway was much easier and we reached our destination after changing trains once.
On our walk from the subway to the Avis car rental place, we saw a McDonalds with a McDrive and a sign near the entrance that said "einfahrt". If that's not funny, I don't know what is LOL. And for clarification, "einfahrt" means "one way". On the Autobahn, we saw the word "ausfahrt" meaning the exit off the highway, but it still sounds funny when you say it outloud.
The Autobahn is awesome! The cars can certainly fly over here. We picked up a silver Audi A3 which prolly in the states would not have much oomph, but here it could move pretty good - according to Scott. I think he reached 180kph at one point and cars were still passing us. Crazy!!! We also had a Tom-Tom gps unit to help navigate the roads, but I have found it's a worthless piece of Scheisse in the cities. Two times it directed us to restaurants that were no longer in business. Scott and I became very frustrated at this point and stopped talking for a bit. I just wanted to throw Tom-Tom out the window.
We ended up bypassing Nuremberg altogether and stopped off the highway further south and bought fuel...it's between $4-5 a gallon over here. Ouch...but the distances are much less here. Scott had to pay .50€ to use the bathroom at the fuel place...let's just say he was not too impressed with having to pay to go pee LOL. Oh, and he did not pay attention to which bathroom he was using either - the woman next to him was prolly surprised to hear the unmistakable sound of a guy peeing hahaha. On another mini-mart stop (for drinks, Scott was very thirsty), we saw aluminum cans with already mixed Beam and coke (I figure Chris G. will get a kick outta that) and other assorted already mixed drinks. They sell a lot of single beer cans...I haven't seen anything like our huge stores of 12/24/36 racks of beer back home. I found a large assortment of Kindereggs at the rest stop too. For those unfamiliar, they are hollow chocolate eggs with toys inside. I got three - Pooh & Tigger, Madagascar, and Wall-E. Laugh if you want... Scott also figures out the reverse gear at the mini mart stop. Apparently, you have to push the gear stick down and then up to the left. I thought for a moment I'd have to push the car to move it in reverse LOL.
We finally made it to München and again Tom-Tom made it very difficult to get to our hotel. I booked this hotel about a month not knowing if it was in a good area. Wellllll....I believe I put us up in the red light district of the city which is evident due to the high number of cabarets surrounding our front step. At least it is very close to the Hauptbahnoft central station. Scott and I went to the subway and bought tickets to go to the Marienplatz. Again, the selection was very confusing but the subway was very easy to figure out. We headed east two stops and walked to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner and beer. The mugs here are outrageously gigantic and one was plenty for me, although I wanted to see if I could drink one more and try to make it back to the hotel under my own power. But we were getting tired from the long drive and residual jet lag so we went back to the hotel early. Tomorrow, we'll head to the Augustiner which is kitty corner to the Hofbräuhaus and next to the Hard Rock Cafe.
Now to see if Dumb-Dumb will drive us into the lake tomorrow...
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