Saturday in Munich; headed home

Travel:
Kathryn and I had one more day together in Munich, and just caught the S-Bahn down to the Marienplatz for a day of wandering and shopping. We found lots of good stuff; books, gummis, toys, etc. and were really amazed at how many people were in the city for such a cold February day, but it was the last weekend of Carnival after all, with fat Tuesday looming the next week. We had brats and so forth at the Augustiner Grossgaststaette, which was very tasty. Towards the end of the day we paid our admission and walked the 300 steps to the top of St. Peter's cathedral for a fantastic view of Munich. We're both pretty sure we did that the last time we were in Munich as well (1998), but our legs were ten years younger...maybe I'm NOT doing the firefighter stairclimb in March after all!!!

The rest of the evening was just the usual packing, arranging transport to the airport, etc. We also hit a local Italian restaurant for dinner (I don't know why it strikes me so funny to hear other nationalities speaking German with their own accent, but it does! The best was at a Chinese restaurant in 1998 where the owner spoke German with a heavy Chinese accent...) We had separate flights back to Seattle, so I left first on Sunday morning on Air France, and had very comfortable and easy connections from Munich to Paris and Paris to Seattle. I hadn't flown an A330 before, but it is very reminiscent of the 777--confident and powerful--and I had two seats to myself. After clearing customs, DJ picked me up and took me to the ferry terminal, where my mom had just arrived from Bainbridge, so she got into DJ's car and he took her right back to the airport--good timing! My last beer conquest for the trip was found at Commuter Comforts in the ferry terminal, and after watching the superbowl at home, I collapsed into bed at 8. Kathryn finally arrived home at 10:30 or so, with the fun proposition of being back in the office 12 hours later. The life of a bigwig...

Conclusions for the trip:
I definitely want to spend a lot more time in Belgium--I could see spending weeks and months there and barely scratching the surface.
I would also like to return to Munich and surrounds, for Bamberg and Weihenstephan in particular.

Beer:
Augustiner Grossgaststaette:
Augustiner dunkeles--mahogany brown, some DMS notes, malty and somewhat viscous, trace of lemon zest, caramel malt, dense creamy head. Very enjoyable.
Augustiner helles--dense creamy head, straw yellow, noble hops very present in the nose, slight malt character and not as crisp/dry as a pils, hops present in the taste but well-balanced. Refreshing.

Italian place:
Hofbraeuhaus Hefeweizen--the first decent hefe I've had on this trip, with typical banana, cloudiness from yeast, crisp and refreshing and no solvent or clove to speak of. Very nice after all the other disappointments prior to this.

Commuter Comforts:
Skagit River Brewing Dutch Girl Lager--very nice lager with plenty of hops (borders on English IPA in that department). Floral notes, straw yellow, head falls in very quickly.