English Garden

This was our last day of our summer adventure, 2010. Tomorrow we have a full day spent getting home, so that day doesn’t really count. Once we are home, I will do a few more blog entries with some reflection on what went well and what didn’t, what the final cost tally was and how that compared with other trips we have taken. It’s always good to reflect on what you might have done differently if you had known then what you know now. It’s good to do that right away, while the memories are still fresh, but it’s also good to consider that question after some time has passed, and the mental toll the trip has taken has faded.

Today we wanted to keep things open and casual. So we slept in a little, had a huge breakfast, and walked to a bike rental shop we had a brochure for. Then we biked to the “English Gardens” – Europe’s largest city park. It truly is huge, and the edge is located just a few blocks from the city center. We biked there for two hours (with just a couple of short breaks) and hardly saw a single building. It was just trees, streams (top photo) and meadows for as far as the eye could see. There were plenty of people there, but in a park that size, even thousands hardly seem like a crowd at all.

Apparently the Germans are rather fond of the “natural” lifestyle and enjoy being unclothed outdoors. The guidebooks warned of naked locals sunning themselves in the park and sure enough, there were a few. We even ran across a small heard of sheep (middle photo) and stopped for a break at the Chinese Tower restaurant area (bottom).

After returning our bikes, we were a little tired and hot, so we went back to our hotel to rest a little before going out again in time to see the Glockenspiel chime and find some food. One final stroll around Munich was all we had time for before coming back to do a final packing of our stuff, including finding ways to pack the childrens’ souvenirs so they would be safe. At least our little one-quart baggies of liquids will be a lot lighter on the way home!

I think we all miss home a little. Five weeks is a long time to be away. We used to think three weeks was an exceptionally long trip. But none of us has suffered from much homesickness either. The children spent very little time pining for the conveniences and familiar things of home. They new this was a grand adventure and that they should be getting as much out of it as they could. We will all be happy to see home again – our cat, friends and relatives, familiar food and creature comforts. But we will also be sad to see the adventure end…