Today began with packing and rearranging to make room for some souvenirs that we had gotten to start to be ready for our flight tomorrow. We had breakfast at the hotel and just kind of leisurely made our way into Munich and Marienplatz to finally see the glockenspiel play. We started with some shopping for a few last items we wanted to take home.

The glockenspiel plays at 11 and noon each day and we had missed it on our previous days in Munich. It’s a two part story the top is a wedding and includes a joust!

The bottom is dancers spinning around to raise spirits during the plague. It’s fun and we enjoyed getting to see it. We then wanted to have some weisswurst which is a white Munich area sausage typically eaten before noon.

One other thing that throws a lot of visitors is you are supposed to remove the skin on this sausage. We found a place sat down to enjoy our wursts. After this early lunch we did more shopping and also got to see the inside of St Peter’s church near Marienplatz as it was closed when we went by on our walking tour.

We did some more walking and ended up at the Augustiner Platz beer hall to have a last beer in Germany before leaving.

After our beer and a snack we headed to the train station to wait for our train.

As this would be two trains and almost 6 hours total we decided to pickup a few sandwiches for dinner on the train. We boarded the train and headed to Paris for our final night in Europe. One thing Becky and I has talked about before leaving on the trip was the possibility of attending the Christmas midnight mass and vigil at Sacre Couer which is one of our favorite cathedrals in Europe. Becky had also talked to her grandmother about it so we felt like it became a must if we could make it work. The train got in on time to Gare de l’Est at 10:05 so we had enough time to get to the hotel and check in before heading up to Montmartre. We hopped on the subway them it deposited us at the base of the Montmartre hill so it was a half mile or so walk uphill followed by what seemed like 1000 steps. I arrived at the top to find Becky waiting ad I gasped for breath. We looked up at the cathedral beautifully lit up against the night sky.

After admiring this and the view of the city below us (and giving me time to breath again) we headed in to the cathedral. We found seats and followed along with the singing, etc for the most part. It was mostly in French but a few things were either written or spoken in English. We waited until after the Christmas story reading and the homily them decided to give up our seats and leave as we weren’t going to take communion. It was a really good thing to do and a wonderful way to start our LONG Christmas day. We are now sitting in the airport at our gate after getting up super early to finalize our packing and get to the airport. We went earlier than even we would have because due to my temporary password American airlines would not let me check on online. All is well though and we are through the EU passport control and security.