Note: The weather is working against us, so for the first two days there’s not a lot to report or show.

FRIDAY

We had a long and uneventful flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt, and then a long and uneventful train ride from Frankfurt to Munich.

Here’s the train station right there in the Frankfurt Airport (not to be confused, we were told, with the Frankfurt station, which is in Frankfurt, unlike the Airport station, which is not).

Uneventful, except for this:

Not only is it snowing in Bavaria, it’s a white-out. MY FAVORITE KIND OF WEATHER, KENNETH. (It is not my favorite kind of weather.)

The hotel in Munich is nice, Hotel One, clean, well-appointed. After a short rest, we met with the group to walk down to the Christmas Market. It was crowded, snowy, and pretty enough. No shopping, because we were just getting our bearings. (Our tour guide, Jim, is an old friend from GHP who drags tours around Europe.)

We dined at the Weisses Bräuhaus, near the market, where we had traditional German food and those who liked beer had traditional German beer.

And as was foretold, we trudged back to the hotel in the snow — still falling — where some of us retired. I went to the bar, basic but solid, and had a gin and tonic before retiring.

SATURDAY

Still snowing. This is the garden area outside our hotel window.

We headed back to the Marienplatz, where the Christmas Market  is, in time to hear the Glockenspiel play and watch the charming 19th-c. animatronics do their thing in the New Town Hall tower.

Then over to Alte Peter, “Old Peter,” the oldest church in Munich. (Munich — Bavaria in general — is Catholic, having fought off Martin Luther and his minions over the years.)

Although the Alte Peter dates to the 12th-c., the  interior is a mishmosh of subsequent architectural styles, with Rococo predominating.

Next we hit up the Frauenkirche, the “Lady Church,” i.e., a cathedral devoted to Mary. I don’t have a photo of this one. I’ve been bundled up with multiple layers, plus a stadium coat, plus scarf/hat/gloves, so it’s a real pain to get the phone out and take a photo. My apologies.

Lunch at the Augustiner Bräuhaus, where it was so crowded that we were able to be seated only because we volunteered to take two other people at the table. We were joined by a lovely Belgian father and his young son, who had come to Munich for a soccer match but were forced by the weather to circle the airport for two hours, plus wait for the transport bus (from the tarmac to the terminal), and then found trains/buses/taxis were all shut down because of the snow.

You know, the beautiful snow that you all seem to love.

We were not with the group, so we decided to use our time before regrouping to head over to TK Maxx so I could buy a fleece blanket for my personal sleeping comfort. By the time we made it back to the Frauenkirche for the next leg of the trip, the group had already moved on to the Residenz. Since we’re all communicating via WhatsApp, we told them that was fine, we would do our own thing.

We then set off to maybe actually shop at the Market, but then one of us wanted to find a shop that we remembered from visiting Munich in 2007, Kenneth. You might be surprised to learn that we never found it.

At this point we decided to trek back to the hotel. It was still snowing.

At the time of this writing, we are wondering if we are going to be able to find anywhere that’s open at which we can eat dinner. If worse comes to worst, I have a pack of trail mix that will keep us alive until morning.