Guess what...our car service showed up AGAIN and ON TIME to pick us up from our Paris hotel and deliver us to Gare de l'est for our approximately 6 hour train ride to Muenchen. We were a little sad to say that Paris is behind us (everybody except Mrs. Mynatt anyway). Paris is a rough and tough and gritty - but beautiful - city that's nice to visit, but I sure wouldn't want to live there!
Our train ride from Paris to Mannheim journey was definitely a time to rest and recover from the previous days' activities...and you KNOW how much activity we've had. I vaguely remember about an hour of the train ride this morning - the remaining 5 hours were spent in various stages of unconsciousness.
I should say some of our exhaustion is caused by loading ALL of that LUGGAGE onto the train. Our little group of 21 can EASILY fill the entire luggage area for a train car designed to hold 50 people...does that tell you how much luggage we have??? (whew) But we all work together on luggage loading. Some are better at dragging and some are better at throwing and some, like Eli and Lucas, are just plain old better at EVERYTHING concerning loading luggage. We are thankful for the teamwork we have here. That's one of the skills we must must must acquire and acquiring is exactly what we're doing.
I should also add a side note here that there was a last minute French train strike scheduled for 7:00 pm today. I must admit this weighed on my mind a bit, but our train departed before the strike began - thank you God for that blessing because spending an additional unscheduled night in Paris just might push dear Mrs. Mynatt off the deep end ;-)
As our TGV train rolled toward Germany the country side began to appear before us as the grit of city disappeared behind us. As we arrived into Muenchen Haupthanhof (main train station) the first thing we all noticed was the tremendous HEAT. The hotel front desk person told us last week was freezing and this week is sweltering...sounds a little like Knoxville to me :-)
Thankfully our little hotel right on the Viktuallienmarkt (try saying that 3 times in a row) has a handy new lift to whisk our luggage up to our rooms. When the very first Europe Student Group stayed here the elevator was not yet installed, and we "got" to use the handy dandy spiral 5 story staircase. The only thing our hotel doesn't have (and neither do most Bavarian hotels) is air-conditioning. It must have been at least 90 Farenheit today :-) So what better thing to do in Muenchen on a sweltering day than visit the English Gardens and the lakes and boats. We had a good time, and we'll probably be back at least one more time:
After some time in the beautiful English gardens on this sweltering day it was time for our dinner reservations at L'Osteria. We had some tremendous pizzas and pastas and bruschettas. It's a great restaurant with way too much food. After we saw the loads of food being delivered to us we decided we most definitely should have split!
After our fabulous Italian dinner Mrs. Mynatt and Mr. Margene took us around the Marienplatz and the Karlsplatz. We walked by our favorite little ice cream place and took in our last late night snack before walking back to our hotel for final devotions and instructions about tomorrow. We'll be training down to see Neuschwanstein Castle tomorrow as well as riding on the Summer Luge at Tegelberg. Munich weather is SOOO very different this year. Last year's Munich weather was cold and rainy beyond belief so I'm thankful for this beautiful sunshine. We're all tired and ready for bed, and we hope all of the parents at home are doing well. Don't worry about your little ones. They're doing wonderfully well. See you tomorrow with updates of another fun-filled day in Bavaria!
Gute Nacht from Muenchen :-)
PS: Special Note from Mrs. Mynatt:
Our train ride from Paris to Mannheim journey was definitely a time to rest and recover from the previous days' activities...and you KNOW how much activity we've had. I vaguely remember about an hour of the train ride this morning - the remaining 5 hours were spent in various stages of unconsciousness.
I should say some of our exhaustion is caused by loading ALL of that LUGGAGE onto the train. Our little group of 21 can EASILY fill the entire luggage area for a train car designed to hold 50 people...does that tell you how much luggage we have??? (whew) But we all work together on luggage loading. Some are better at dragging and some are better at throwing and some, like Eli and Lucas, are just plain old better at EVERYTHING concerning loading luggage. We are thankful for the teamwork we have here. That's one of the skills we must must must acquire and acquiring is exactly what we're doing.
I should also add a side note here that there was a last minute French train strike scheduled for 7:00 pm today. I must admit this weighed on my mind a bit, but our train departed before the strike began - thank you God for that blessing because spending an additional unscheduled night in Paris just might push dear Mrs. Mynatt off the deep end ;-)
As our TGV train rolled toward Germany the country side began to appear before us as the grit of city disappeared behind us. As we arrived into Muenchen Haupthanhof (main train station) the first thing we all noticed was the tremendous HEAT. The hotel front desk person told us last week was freezing and this week is sweltering...sounds a little like Knoxville to me :-)
Thankfully our little hotel right on the Viktuallienmarkt (try saying that 3 times in a row) has a handy new lift to whisk our luggage up to our rooms. When the very first Europe Student Group stayed here the elevator was not yet installed, and we "got" to use the handy dandy spiral 5 story staircase. The only thing our hotel doesn't have (and neither do most Bavarian hotels) is air-conditioning. It must have been at least 90 Farenheit today :-) So what better thing to do in Muenchen on a sweltering day than visit the English Gardens and the lakes and boats. We had a good time, and we'll probably be back at least one more time:
After some time in the beautiful English gardens on this sweltering day it was time for our dinner reservations at L'Osteria. We had some tremendous pizzas and pastas and bruschettas. It's a great restaurant with way too much food. After we saw the loads of food being delivered to us we decided we most definitely should have split!
After our fabulous Italian dinner Mrs. Mynatt and Mr. Margene took us around the Marienplatz and the Karlsplatz. We walked by our favorite little ice cream place and took in our last late night snack before walking back to our hotel for final devotions and instructions about tomorrow. We'll be training down to see Neuschwanstein Castle tomorrow as well as riding on the Summer Luge at Tegelberg. Munich weather is SOOO very different this year. Last year's Munich weather was cold and rainy beyond belief so I'm thankful for this beautiful sunshine. We're all tired and ready for bed, and we hope all of the parents at home are doing well. Don't worry about your little ones. They're doing wonderfully well. See you tomorrow with updates of another fun-filled day in Bavaria!
Gute Nacht from Muenchen :-)
PS: Special Note from Mrs. Mynatt:
What a blessing to have had such beautiful weather this year…so far, so good!
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