Christmas in Munich

I spend a lot of time in Munich for work, and lived there for 18 months in the period 1999 - 2000. But my mother (Giz) has never been there, because my father was too poorly to be left on his own. So I took her to Munich last week for a couple of days to see the Christmas markets.

It's such a beautiful place, probably my favourite city in the world. It turned out that Giz wasn't too impressed by the first Christmas market, at Marienplatz, as you can see, so I didn't force Tollwood on her (a huge market on the site of the Oktoberfest). 

Instead she wanted to go to a museum so we went to the Deutsche Museum. I've never been there before. The boats and canoes were very interesting (not meant ironically). 

We also went to the planetarium, though the commentary was entirely in German so we didn't understand any of it except occasional references to "Milch Strasse" and "Marz."

I had hoped to take Giz to a fabulous restaurant, the Bogenhauser Hof, but unfortunately it was fully booked. We did go to an Indian restaurant, newly named Ganesha (formerly Namaskar) not far from the Hilton where we were staying.

All in all a nice time; and on Saturday, back in London, we went to the Holbein exhibition at Tate Britain, which was marvellous (although sadly Anne of Cleves was not present), followed by The Nutcracker at the Coliseum with English National Ballet. This was a new version of a ballet we've seen several times before. It was very colourful and quite special.