Cape Cod Part I

During the last week of our trip home, Joern and I headed up to Cape Cod for four days. The great thing about the Cape is that it is so unique in terms of its location and beauty, and it is so close to home.
We headed out on Monday morning, and after a stop at Wal-Mart and the outlet center in Westbrook,CT, we officially hit the road around 2 pm. Traffic was great, and by 4:30, we were crossing over the Sagamore Bridge and officially entering the Cape.
Unfortunately, it isn't too easy to take a picture on a bridge from a moving car, but this is the Cape Cod Canal underneath us as we cross the bridge:

We headed towards Orleans, which is located approximately in the center of the Cape. Lots of people advised that this would be a good place to stay for Joern's first trip, because of its central location, you ´can reach all areas of the Cape in well under an hour.
Finding good deals on hotels in the Cape in the summer is like finding a needle in a haystack, but we got relatively lucky. We stayed at the Cove Motel in Orleans. Not bad. The view from the hotel was particularly beautiful.



Once we got checked in and freshened up, we decided to do a little exploring before dinner.




Dinner was at the Lobster Claw, a pretty popular family style restaurant in Orleans.
I have to admit, my dinner was a bit indulgent, but a very welcome taste of home. I had a lobster boil dinner, which included lobster, corn on the cob, and 12 steamed clams. I haven't had steamers in years, and boy, were they just as delicious as I remembered!

Joern decided that he wanted to go for a ride after dinner. We headed up towards Provincetown, which lies on the tip of the Cape. We found ourselves at Herring Cove Beach near P-town, just as the sun was setting. Turns out going to the beach and watching the sunset is a hobby at the Cape! Of course, I quickly learned why watching sunsets is so popular there!



We drove through Provincetown before heading home. It was a beautiful night!

Munich Day 2

I guess I should just start posting again with our second day in Munich, obviously a ton of time has passed, but I will just catch up chronologically.
After a great breakfast, and a not-too-good night's sleep, we were on our way at 9:30. Joern and Marcel had a ways to go to get to their 7 Series group meeting. So, Joern dropped me off at the main train station and they went on their way.
Because you just can't break me of some habits, I made my obligatory stop:

With my vanilla late in hand, I headed out to the Deutsches Museum One of the great things about German cities is public transportation. The U Bahn (subway system,) was so easy to navigate, clean, and brought me so very close to the museum.
The neighborhood around the museum is really lovely, it lies along the Isar, a major river in Munich. I really enjoyed the peaceful surroundings as I made my way to the museum.

The museum is gigantic! It is the world's largest science and technology museum, and is definately a boy's dream! I started off in the maritme exhibit hall. They had such interesting exibits, including an entire submarine,

and a very interesting recreation of a passenger ship from the 1800s. What especially drew me in was the segment that showed life on a ship for emigrants to the US. That could have been my family!
After the maritime exhibition hall, I headed to the aeronautics wing. My friend Emily, who lives in Munich, posted that the museum has a cross section of a Lufthansa passenger airplane, so I was intrigued. Of course, the aeronautics wing includes much more than simply the cross-section, they had a large mixture of both military and civilian aircraft. I was surprised how interesting I found this area!



From here, I headed to the paper and printing sections. Again, extraordinarily interesting. The paper exhibit included a Chinese costume made entirely from paper, as well as showcased a number of historical methods of paper making.


I wish I had been able to spend more time in the museum, but honestly, it was a bit overwhelming. I believe the best way to throughly enjoy the Deutsches Museum is in a couple of trips, so that your mind doesn't get completely overloaded by all the things to see and learn. On the way out though, I caught sight of a beautiful view of Munich's famous skyline, which includes the famous twin towers of the Frauenkirche.


Once I was done visiting, I met my friend Emily for the afternoon. It was so great spending the afternoon with Emily in her new hometown of Munich, as she knew so much interesting trivia and of course, it was so lovely to spend time with a fellow expat!
We enjoyed a fabulous, leisurely lunch out in the sun- it was probably the warmest day of the year up to that point (and since then as well.)
After our long lunch, we wandered around Munich for a while, chatting, and having Emily teach me all about the city. I think I need a refresher though before posting about the history- this will teach me not to take notes!!
We stopped and had some delicious ice cream, which helped to cool us down after baking in the sun at lunch.
We did find ourselves at the Viktualienmarkt though, which seems to be an incredible outdoor market. Unfortunately since it was Sunday afternoon, the stands were closed, but I do hope to visit again during opening hours, as it looks wonderful!


From the Viktualienmarkt, we wound back towards the Marienplatz, where Emily was kind enough to wait with me for Joern and Marcel to return from their BMW meeting. When they finally arrived, Joern was able to bribe Emily to have dinner with us (only a little salt was needed.) We had a fabulous dinner at Augutsiner Großgestätten, one of the many restaruants run by "Munich's beer," Augustiner. The building itself is really great because it has a very large interior courtyard, which definately helps on warm summer evenings. Dinner was much better than at the Hofbräuhaus, with a better atmosphere to boot! We had a great dinner with lots of laughs!


We had such a fun time, Joern and I are already talking about a return trip to Munich!

Munich Day 1

Last Saturday, Joern, Marcel, and I headed out for an overnight in Munich. Joern is a member of a BMW 7 Series club, and they had a memorial meeting for a member who passed away last year. Since the meeting was slightly outside Munich, I decided that I would skip the meeting, opting instead to visit with my friend Emily who has been in Munich for a few years now.
Our trip on Saturday took about two hours. Once we were in Munich, we had to wash the car, since a large emphasis of Joern's club's meetings involves looking at each other's cars.
Of course, Marcel thought he had different responsibilites in the car cleaning endeavour.

We then drove in to Munich, and had to pose for some pictures with one of our two babies:

From our photo op, we then went on to our version of Mecca, BMW Welt and the BMW Museum. Hello heaven!
The first stop with BMW Welt (BMW World,) it is basically a showroom with displays of current and future BWM technologies, as well as the pick-up location for new BMWs.

After looking at all the lovely cars, we made a stop by last year's Formula 1 model.

The boys were quite pleased with the many displays of the current BMW engines available today.

Before leaving, we walked up to the bridge from which you can watch people picking up their cars. Evidently, the cars are presented on little turn-tables, so that your car is completely the center of attention. The new BMW owners then get to drive their car right out of the showroom. BMW offers a great program for overseas buyers, which allows people to still pick up their car at BMW Welt, then to drive around Europe to their final desitnation of a shipping port, where you drop off your car for shipping overseas. I'm sure that it is a very special way to bond with your new car.


Because it was getting late, it was time to head over to the BMW Museum, which is right next to the headquarters of BMW. Quite possibly, my favorite place in the world!


The museum was even more lovely than we had expected. It was very well designed, as it starts at the top, and you spiral down. You don't have to go into all the sections, which made Joern happy because he was there to see cars, not motorcycles, and not to read about the history of the company.
At the very top, you begin with early BMWs.

From there, we made our way to the section devoted to the 7 Series, BMW's luxury line. We are super 7 Series people, as we have two "collector" 7 Series from the 1980s. Some of it, I think, is Joern's love for all things 1980s, but also, they are really special cars, and I know we're quite lucky to have two.
The most exciting thing for us was that the car they chose to represent the E32 model (1986-1992), the cars we have, is that we own the exact model, a 750, that was on display, same color, same interior. The only thing we agreed on though, is that our car's wheels are much better looking than those on the displayed car. I have never owned anything that was on display at a museum. We talked about how exciting it is that BMW picked our exact car as one of the best ones they ever made. Obviously, although we may be a bit biased, Joern and I wholeheartedly agree.

With our chests puffed out a bit more, we checked out the rest of the museum. The concept cars were quite interesting, especially the Z9, as you could see many elements that other BMWs have taken from it.

We enjoyed looking at two of the cars that were in James Bond films:

And Joern was particulary excited to see his first car on display as well:

Once we had our fill of the museum, we made our way to the center of Munich for dinner

After much discussion, Joern decided that he wanted to stick with what we know for dinner, so we went to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner.

It was crowded, and the waiter was ridiculously rude, but the food was pretty good and the beer went down great!