Gardens, Towers, and Trains

 It was a late night for me after such a busy day. I finished my blog post around 1:00 am, but I couldn't fall asleep so after uploading a bunch of photos to Facebook, taking some Nyquil, and downloading a white noise app, I think I fell asleep around 4:00 am for a few hours. Hopefully, I will sleep better tonight. I am writing this post on the train to Munich, so I will be able to crash once we arrive at our hotel.

This morning we walked to a Botanical Garden called PalmenGarten. It was about a 15 minute walk to the garden. We walked through several greenhouse type buildings with tropical plants and succulents. It was
already a warm day and it was even warmer in these glass buildings. They also had a building with butterflies, as well as many areas filled with flowers, trees, and assorted plants. It was lovely and peaceful. Zach commented that Germans consider gardening a treasured pastime and even those in the city often have gardens on their balconies.

After the PalmenGarten, we hopped on a train to visit the Dom Tower or Domturm in German. This is a very tall bell tower where from the top you  get a 360 degree view of the city. After climbing the spiraling staircase with 300+ steps, our hard work was rewarded with a spectacular view. We were able to point out many of the places we had visited yesterday from our bird's eye view. This tower is part of the cathedral that survived the bombing of World War II. I wonder who had to climb it to ring the bells each day. It was quite a grueling task to do it just once!

Once we returned to the ground it was back  to Zach's home so that he could walk Suki, his dog, and we could gather our food together for our train trip to Munich. To take the Express Train, it would have cost us 50 Euro each, but during the month of June, there is a special deal. For 9 Euro, you can purchase a pass to ride any of the regional trains in Germany. So we are riding three different trains to get to Munich. It is going to take about 75 minutes longer, but it isn't too bad so far. Each train ride has been one to two hours long. Occasionally, we have internet, but not very often. Usually, it is only when we are sitting at a main transfer station.

It has started to rain. Sadly, the next few days while we are in Munich are supposed to be rainy days with some thunderstorms. We have a lot planned so we will see how our sightseeing goes while getting wet.