Euro-cup=lodging difficulties! Uh-oh.

We've returned to the San Fransisco Coffee Company this evening. We bought a full day's worth of wireless access and are making full use of it, so sorry if the huge number of pictures and sudden influx of blog posts is overwhelming to you all! :) We spent quite a while this morning attempting to make reservations in Salzburg. Turns out we are going to be there the same day as a Euro-cup game between Greece and Sweden. This means rooms are HARD to come by! We ended up finding two very different lodging experiences for the two nights we wanted to stay...first we're renting a room in a private home out in the countryside. They call them privatzimmers, and the home we're staying in belongs to a sweet-looking old couple. They only had one night available, so our second night is in a hostel right near the heart of Salzburg's old city and we're in the dorm there. With a soccer game that night, we're guessing that means no sleep, but the place looks pretty cool. Just collecting experiences, I guess :).

In between internet binges today, we climbed the tower of St. Peter's church here in Munich (another recommendation of our friend at the Wittenburg station). It had amazing views of the city (at least as good as the views from the Eifel Tower.) It also had a platform about two feet wide with only one eingang/ausgang (entrance/exit) door! That led to lots of shimmying around people! From there, we headed to the Frauenkirche (women's church). Nothing spectacular, but I was wondering why this church had so many mentions of the current pope...then I learned he's not only German, but born in Bavaria and was archbishop of Munich. Ah-ha.

We still had a bit of time to kill before the famous Glockenspiel display, so we wandered around, got milkshakes and then joined the throng of tourists heading towards Marienkirche to watch the Glockenspiel. It was pretty cool...not overwhelming, but not underwhelming either. Therefore, I guess it was "whelming." It's mostly cool because it's something I'd heard much about, but never thought I'd actually see myself...and here I am in Munich, watching it! Neat-o.

It started to rain as we left, so we pulled out the umbrellas and headed to the Residenz, the former palace here. It was almost entirely under refurbishment on the outside, so nothing much to see. We wandered into a couple of the various courtyards, but nothing spectacular. I think we saw the prettiest part of the palace yesterday when we wandered through the Royal Gardens and saw the back side of the Residenz.

And now I'm sitting in a barstool in front of a window facing the entrance to that same garden, highly enjoying the people-watching, which has included many soccer fans in their team colors (Germany's playing tonight), several bachelor and bachelorette party groups in their crazy clothes and (apparently a requirement for such parties here) their matching t-shirts, umbrellas of all colors and sizes, and lots of people walking their dogs (dogs are everywhere here and allowed in stores, restaurants, and on public transportation!) It's been a fairly lazy day, which has been nice and we both feel good about catching up a bit on e-mails and blogs. Thanks again for comments and e-mails. We miss you all!