The Travelista

A Weekend Break in Munich

᛫ 4 Comments

Having recently done all the European ‘biggies’ (Paris, Rome, Barcelona) I decided I wanted to try and see some of the smaller and lesser known cities in Europe this year. I had heard a lot about Munich being a trendy and upcoming destination with double the charm and half the crowds of other oversaturated European cities. So when I got invited to experience it on a super lux press trip, I was there with bells on.

We touched down in Munich airport on Friday night and luckily had a speedy reunion with our baggage, we picked up by a swish Audi and whisked off to the centre of Munich. After a 30minute drive we pulled up outside our grand hotel and stared in awe of an unexpected Micheal Jackson shrine that stood imposingly outside the front of the hotel complete with glowing tea lights. When the driver noticed me staring, he explained ‘Micheal Jackson and baby – zis hotel’. After a quick moment of translation I realised he meant  the hotel was in fact the hotel that MJ dangled his baby Blanket out of back in 2002 as well as lived in for 3 months. (If it’s good enough for Michael its good enough for me)

The hotel happened to be the super luxurious 5* Bayerischerhof Hotel, which is a fourth-generation family run hotel located on the Promenadeplatz. Oozing history, grandeur and character, the hotel was a perfect central base for exploring the city (within moments of stepping into the hotel it was clear why it’s long been known as the main haunt for all visiting celebrities and big wigs). After a late night dinner and a few Mai Tai’s at Trader Vic’s Polynesian restaurant, I was ready to get some sleep for a busy day ahead.

One of the suite bedrooms with amazing views of Munich

On Saturday morning I was up early and ready to explore the city. We decided to start the day with a guided city tour which was spent half on mini-bus and half on foot (a perfect combination if you ask me). As we began our tour of the city I was struck by Munich’s blend of wide tree lined streets (such as the ever-so grand Leopold St) with the central cobbled passage ways. Along with quaint squares and the many traditional Bavarian buildings, Munich is unique and extremely picturesque. I’d recommend staying in one of the more central Munich hotels to ensure all of the cities central loveliness is right on your doorstep. Unlike the highly cosmopolitan capital of Berlin, Munich maintains a much more relaxed atmosphere, which gives it its nickname of ‘the village of 1 million people’.

Our tour took us past all of Munich’s most iconic buildings including the Gasteig Cultural Centre, the famous Munich Opera House, Maximillian St (Munich’s answer to Bond Street), the Hof garden, the Frauen Church and Oktoberfest HQ. We also passed the Munich Sealife Centre which would be a great choice for families, or big kids! My favourite part of the tour was seeing Munich’s most bizarre sight, the river surfers. Yep you read that right; the river Isar runs through the centre of Munich and creates a huge natural wave underneath one of the bridges. Ever since one crazy person decided to tackle the wave with a surf board, it’s become Munich’s #1 craze ever since!

Our tour ended with a drink in one of Munich’s famous Hofbrauhaus brewery, which boasts a huge Bavarian beer hall complete with traditional and the biggest pretzels I have ever seen! Despite not being a beer lover myself, I took the when in Rome approach and decided to sample the local delights. Visiting the brewery was a great way to do something typically Bavarian and generally just soak up the atmosphere. Carrying on the theme of German ‘tipples’, we headed back to the hotel for an extravagant meal and numerous bottles of German wine!

Day 2 included a trip to the well-known Haus der Kunst, Munich’s centre of modern art comparable to the Tate London. Feeling slightly woolly from the events of the night prior I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the exhibitions, especially Kendell Geers exhibition on the South African apartheid. Sounds like heavy stuff I know – but it was actually extremely interesting and I’d highly recommend a visit.

The rest of my trip consisted in a bit of Sunday afternoon ‘wind down time’ complete with massage, sauna and steam room session (goodbye German alcohol). With a flight time of just 1hr 30 mins from the UK, bags of attractions and culture and endless bars and restaurants, Munich is a highly underrated city and makes for the perfect European short break destination. I fell in love with the city and genuinely can’t wait to return.

Have you ever been to Munich? Tell me about your experience!

Comments

    • How strange, I think you had some very elaborate tour guides? We were told by a staff member at the hotel who does all the celebrity relations. There is also an MJ shrine outside the hotel 🙂 x

      Reply

Spark a conversation!

Follow on Instagram

  • Theo’s first smile 😊 Theo is now 20 weeks old but he is “6 weeks corrected”. This means it’s 6 weeks since his due date, so if he was born on time he would be 6 weeks old. So although my little boy has been living and breathing on earth for over 14 extra weeks, developmentally he is only 6 weeks old. It’s a strange concept to get your head around at first, and I’m not massively keen on the “corrected” terminology but it is what it is. If we’re out and about and people take an interest by asking his age (and omg they do so much), I tell them his corrected age. Being so early I have been wondering if Theo’s developmental milestones will be a little slower but this week Theo has given us his first “social smile”, right on track at 6 weeks old! This is a huge milestone, although the smile was at Grandma and not at me. Our little miracle continues to amaze us every day. We are so proud of him 💫
  • Mental health 💭🌿 It’s a topic I’ve never talked about before because honestly, I have never been affected by it. I would see things about anxiety online and just feel very disconnected from it as I didn’t truly understand what it was, but all that has changed. I went from having a super healthy pregnancy to a very poorly premature baby in the space of a few days. I’ve held my babies hand whilst he fought for his life, fearing that we’d never get to take him home. I lived in an intensive care unit for 6 weeks, met parents with heart-breaking stories and have been exposed to all the possible health issues of prematurity. This week my Health Visitor helped me to realise that all this has manifested itself into quite a severe health anxiety. It felt like a huge weight off my shoulders to acknowledge this and to talk about ways I can get help with this new found anxiety, and process the rocky experience I’ve been through. She told me about a local mental health service which today I self-referred myself to. It may take a long time to psychologically recover from all that we’ve been through, but today I made a positive step towards getting there, so I can enjoy my boy without this dark cloud of anxiety looming over me. Does anyone have any advice and tips for dealing with health anxiety? 💭💫 Photo taken whilst Theo was still in hospital 💕
  • Adventure awaits my darling boy! Before Theo was even meant to be born he had already spent time in 3 different hospitals, in 3 different cities. The nurses all joked he was doing his own “Tour de Yorkshire” (clearly the travel life chose him 😅). When I was pregnant, I had plans to be on a plane with him once he was a few months old. I envisaged myself exploring a new city with with him strapped to my chest whilst navigating with Google Maps. I wanted to jump in two feet first to the whole “travelling abroad with a baby” thing, but it turns out life had other plans. Being premature, Theo’s immune system is much less robust and he is more susceptible to infections compared to a term baby. Whilst this isn’t going to stop us from seeing the world, it means we want to stay close to the NHS for Theo’s first year. So what does this mean for my travels and the blog? Well, you can expect to see a new emphasis on UK travel content, with plenty of mini breaks, local staycations and boutique hotels which we can enjoy as a family, with Theo. Any overseas trips I do will continue to be baby-free for now, for the next 12 months at least. Although I’m excited for my content to reflect my new journey into motherhood, I’m not about to become a ‘mummy blogger’. I want to maintain my own identity and I think my blog will play a big part in that. My life has evolved so it’s time to allow my blog to evolve with me as I start this next chapter of my life. I hope you all stick around for the adventures, no matter how big or small they may be. Swipe for the cutest morning sneezes 💫🌍👶🏼 P.S Thanks Auntie @hannahfrancesm for Theo’s cool new sleepsuit (from @shopmatalan)
  • The woman who has held me together since my life fell apart. When Scott had to go back to work and Theo was in hospital in Sheffield, my Mum dropped everything to come and stay with me in the hospital accommodation for 6 weeks. She was there for me on my darkest days, when my heart was shattered into a million pieces and I didn’t think I could keep going. She sat with me beside Theo’s incubator day in, day out, even though she was not allowed to touch or hold him. She spent hours researching everything there is to know about premature babies. She must have sterilised my expressing kit for me over 200 times 😂😩. She is the most selfless woman I’ve ever known and now that I’ve become a Mum myself I appreciate her even more. Today is her Birthday and we got to spend it together as a family, eating cake and drinking prosecco (just the one aperol spritz for me👌🏼). Theo got to meet his cousin Amelie for the first time and it was the first day my Mum got to spend time with both of her grandkids together. I was nervous to take Theo out into a restaurant for the first time but he was so good and slept for almost the whole time! Happy Birthday Mum and thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Today was good for the soul 💫🎂
  • (AD - Gifted) Our first outing ✨🍃 We took Theo for a pram walk around our favourite place in Leeds, Temple Newsam. I’m not going to lie, it felt like a pretty scary task and my head was full of worries. Are we really allowed to actually take our baby out and about? After everything with Theo being so medicalised for the past +3 months, it felt so alien to just get out of the house and do something *normal* as a family. Having done nothing but spend my days in hospital, I sort of have to integrate myself back into society too. I’ve been institutionalised 😅 We only managed a short stroll before the rain came in, but it still felt like a huge accomplishment and was amazing to take Theo (and ourselves) out for some fresh air. Baby steps! People who saw us walking around will have had no idea what we’d been through to get there. Mamas, what was your first outing with your newborn and how did it go? Our Pram is the new Day3 from @myjoolz (hiding under the rain cover) and we absolutely love it! Head to my stories for a closer look at the pram #myjoolz💘
  • Never in a million years did I think I’d get to finally breast feed Theo. Alongside the rollercoaster ride of having a premature baby, I’ve had my own physical challenge of expressing and maintaining my milk supply when Theo was too tiny to orally feed. Since the day Theo was born, I was encouraged to start trying to express breast milk. The Neonatal doctors explained that breast milk, especially colostrum, is like medicine to premature babies. The antibodies and immunities it carries cannot be replicated by any drug or formula. As Theo came so early, my body was nowhere near ready to produce any breast milk but after almost a week of painful hand expressing, my milk came in. In order to keep my milk supply up I’ve had to express 8 times a day by electric pump, every day, for the past 17 weeks (now you can see why I haven’t had time post anything on Instagram😅). Amongst the stress and anxiety I was going through in the Neonatal unit, expressing so frequently was incredibly tough. There were so many times I wanted to give up, but knowing it would benefit Theo and improve his health kept me going. As Theo got bigger he developed the sucking and swallowing skills needed to breast feed so we gave it a go. He took to it amazingly! At that moment all those painful hours of expressing at 2am suddenly became worth it. It was one of the first ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ elements of motherhood that I got to experience. Unfortunately Theo can’t be exclusively breastfed as there aren’t enough calories in breast milk alone for him to have a ‘catch up’ growth. He’s on a special feeding plan created by the Neonatal dietician which combines prescription formula with some of my breast milk and extra calories and fats. So although sadly our breastfeeding journey can’t be long term, it existed, and for that I am proud ✨💕 Thanks to my friend Emily who spontaneously took this family photo of us, even though I still felt so awkward about getting my boob out at the time 🙈

Subscribe

Never miss a post! Subscribe for Travelista updates and newsletters

Latest Video