The forecast for today had been rain but luckily when we got up the sun was shining and it stayed like that for most of the day. We went back to the Residence today as we hadn’t been round the palace rooms and it was a good job the person on reception the other day had suggested that it might take a while to go round as it took us about four hours! It is a complete labyrinth once you were inside the complex and I think that if it wasn’t for the arrows pointing the way we could still be walking round now! There are approximately 100 rooms and you can visit about 70, they vary in style and grandeur from the first room you go in – the Antiquarium which is where Maximilian kept all his treasures from antiquity but would be a fantastic palace to hold a party as it is a very elegant room with high arches down both sides and what looks like a polished marble floor this was probably my favourite room. The other end of the scale is the chapel which was bombed during the war and has been rebuilt but not redecorated so is just bare brickwork. It would seem that a lot of the rooms were damaged during the war and along with the damage to the rooms a lot of the furniture was damaged so in places it has been brought from other royal homes and in others they have just left the rooms empty. It is difficult to describe all the rooms as there are so many, but in both of the main sections of the living quarters they all interconnect and don’t seem to have a separate corridor, you walk through each of the rooms to get to the next which seems very strange. The building was both a residence and seat of government from the time of the first rulers in 1623 when they were electors, through to the kings of Bavaria who only gave up the throne in 1918 which is when a number of the royal houses in Europe gave up their monarchy’s. By the time we had finished walking round it was almost 1pm so we decided to go back to the English Garden to get something to eat and also to look for the area which is where surfers ride the waves on the canal. As it turned out we found the surfers before we found the beer garden, I am not quite sure how we missed it the other day as it was pretty much on the road we walked along but we somehow managed to walk round it without finding it! We stood watching the surfers for a while. It is a man made river which creates a single wave by the bride that the surfers can ride. Some looked like they should be in school and quite a few looked like they should be in work but there were also a couple of sliver surfers who showed everyone else how it should be done, I think they have been surfing this river for a long time! From here we went to the beer garden and had some lunch, then walked back to Marienplatz for a final walk round before heading back to the hotel to relax before going out for something to eat later, I cant believe we have been here a week and we will be heading home tomorrow!
