Pinholica: Abroad: The Populist in Munich, Strasbourg, and Paris

I misread a list on my phone and we missed the train we intended to take to Munich, so got there later than we had hoped. Because every accommodation in the city center was either booked or way more expensive than we wanted, we had booked The Prinz Myshkin Parkhotel, somewhat out of the city center, but which was just blocks away from the Nymphenburg Palace and it's extensive gardens. Because of the late arrival, we only got a half hour or so before the sun set to go into the gardens, but it was far enough to encounter a pair of swans looking elegant in the canal, and this little structure named Pagodenberg by a lake, with the sun setting behind it.

A closer view of the building with the camera supported on a recycling bin, there on the left in the previous picture.

Before Sarah and I were married, she subscribed to a series of Time-Life books about Great Museums of the World. It's always a cool experience to stand face to face with the paintings you've seen in a book for years. We had just gone to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (on a dark and rainy day), and our first stop in Munich was the Alte Pinakotek.

The building interior was more modern than I expected.

You ascend this grand staircase on the south side of the building.

When you get to the top, there is still this brilliant hallway before you enter the galleries.

My favorite museum moment: Just beyond that door, to the right is a little vestibule that leads to two other galleries. There are two paintings hanging on the short bit of wall among all those doors: A Da Vinci and a Filippo Lippi!

We had lunch in the dining room of the Pinakotek. I love museum restaurants.

After lunch, we went to the Ägyptisches Museum below the University of Television and Film. A very modern, orderly and disciplined presentation of Egyptology, particularly in contrast to the more traditional, oriental, comprehensive and a little busy presentation we had just seen at the Kunsthistorisches Museum a few days earlier.

After being drenched in ancients and classics, we finished up in the Moderne Pinakotek, with it's voluminous four-story grand rotunda.

The galleries are similarly monumental.

In the central hall that bisects the gallery floor, there are occasional artworks with a bench to set your camera on at the end.

We had to check out and get to the station early although our train was later so we had time to have a beer before leaving Munich, and some excellent pommes frittes. They had really great fries everywhere we went on this trip. One surprise was that the restaurants would only have one light and one dark beer available, usually from the same vendor, occasionally a brand we get all the time in the U.S., and one Belgian fruit beer.

We got the right train this time, but it was forty minutes late. We had a more than hour and a half layover in Mannheim, so we weren't too concerned. The longer we got in to the trip, the more the arrival in Mannheim got delayed, and several times, the trained stopped dead on the tracks. Technical note: I'm pretty sure those arcs are raindrops. I had the camera held right up against the window. Everything in "focus" with pinhole ya know.

Arrived in Mannheim with about 10 minutes to go and had a nice conversation with an American girl from Missouri. I think that's her in the sunshine to the right.

We joked that we came to Strasbourg to eat. We happened to be in the Cathedral Square (everything leads to the Cathedral Square) at lunch and ate at the Brasserie Au Dauphin. I had an excellent volaille with sauce aux champignons that surprisingly came with this giant bowl of those fantastic frites. And bread. I hate to see a half of a baguette go to waste. And desert. We overate and ended up having a sampling of Alsatian cheeses and beer in the hotel bar for dinner.

We still made it to a museum or two.

Before lunch, we had gone to the Archeological Museum below the palace.

And after lunch, we came back for the Decorative Arts Museum on the main floor of the Palace.

On to Paris on the 322 km/h TGV.

Got there before check-in time. We splurged in Paris and were staying about two blocks from the Place de la Concorde, right across the Rue de Rivoli from the The Tuileries, so after having a very French baguette sandwich for lunch, we took a walk in the garden.