We arrived in Munich at about 10am on June 15th, but our flight to Tbilisi wasn't leaving until after 9pm, giving us several hours to explore the city.
The Munish airport has a nice list of things one can do during layovers of various lengths. Since the airport is connected by train to the city, spending a few hours actually seeing a tiny bit of Munish is possible.
The one thing that kept coming up for Munich was the Rathaus-Glockenspiel. We weren't sure what it looked like, but we knew it was a mechanical performing thing of some kind, and that it was in Marienplatz in Munich. So we found a place in the airport to store our bags (you hand them to a guy behind a desk and get a claim tag), and took the S-bahn train into town.
We made our way into Marienplatz, a big plaza full of tourists and cafes, surrounded by interesting buildings and wandered around a little before finding a tourist information center. There we asked where to find the glockenspiel, and the lady behind the desk pointed up. The information booth was in the base of the Glockenspiel tower: a classic dumb tourist moment.
We were lucky to be there just at the right time, as the glockenspiel only does its thing three times a day. As we came back out of the information center we could see more people, and now they were all looking up.
The Marienplatz has a lot of other interesting architecture, including this dragon that Cielo liked:
After seeing the glockenspiel, we set off to find some lunch. There were numerous cafes around the platz, and we finally picked one that looked promising. This was the kids' first encounter with how milk is served in Germany - warm! Even if you prefer cold milk, you have to agree the warm milk makes a better milk mustache.
Cielo had pfannkuchensuppe - soup with "pancake noodles", basically crepes that have been sliced up into long shapes. It was delicious. Vernon and Alison chose the bratwurst and beer.
Not far from the platz we found this great public fountain, and then went up in the (right hand) tower here to see the view.
Then we did some more walking around, motivating the kids with more ice cream. During our walk we saw this nice window display - that's a mannequin fishing with spools of thread.
And then it was back on the train and back to the airport.
The meal at the airport was actually pretty good: ham and cheese sandwich (Eero); ham & cheese pancake (Vernon); and ham and cheese pasta for Cielo. Alison didn't get the memo and had meatloaf and potato salad. Then it was time for our flight to Tbilisi!