And so Alex rang up and said, Dude – I'm going to be in Munich for a few days if you want to cruise over, and I thought, Hey – Random jaunts to the Continent are precisely what Americans living on this side of the Atlantic are supposed to do, so they don't forever regret that they never hopped over to Europe nearly as often as they should have when they could have.

So Saturday morning, Anna and I hopped a flight from Heathrow; and two hours later were in Bavaria. Hijinks – herewith documented – ensued. (Pretty much the only text is in captions, so you can safely just flip through the pictures. Also, in a much-requested feature (by Anna), you can now use your left and right arrow keys to flip through images.)

This next video probably requires slight annotation. Basically, we spotted a billboard advertising that the Scorpions were playing that night and in the Olympic Park we were right next to. The Scorps were sort of a standby when we were, oh, fourteen or fifteen. We immediately resolved to go to the concert – and then flaked out not very much later when we got tired.

Since I have a little space, with the orphaned photo, I'll say I was initially opposed to the BMW Musuem – I told A&A they could go on their own. But, having tagged along, I really enjoyed it. I didn't have to read any wall text, unless really grabbed. And, mainly, it was a very happy photo hunting ground.

The tower turned out to be shut for renovations, so we sort of slogged our way out of that area – and made a beeline for die Altstadt (the famously picturesque Old Town). We got off the U-bahn in Marienplatz – and our accidental timing was uncanny.

Mercifully for the others, my camera batteries failed right at this point. (The Glockenspiel did eventually spin up, with circling, jousting knights and whatnot.)

It also started to rain, as I led us on a death march for Der Hoffbrauhaus – Munich's most famous pub. This was probably the worst idea I've ever had. We spent about a half hour fighting through the heaving throngs of city centre tourists, in the rain, trying to navigate from the map – and when we got there, it was, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted about the number one pub pick in the guidebook, absolutely horrendous.

We backed out instantly – and had great luck slinking back to a very pretty little restaurant/pub/biergarten that we had passed on our Death March. It was totally lovely, and we had a wonderful evening drinking, and eating, and laughing – and I stole Anna's camera so you don't have to miss a moment!