Sightseeing Sundays: Munich (Europe Part 6 of 6)

Munich...the last stop of our whirlwind trip which had us feeling bittersweet because we were not even close to being ready for our vacation to end. We easily could have stayed in Europe another two weeks, two months...maybe even indefinitely. Anyway, we arrived to Munich very early after departing Vienna late the night before (almost missing the train!). We were exhausted, tired, hungry, and needed a shower badly.
We instantly got very lost trying to find our lodging for our two days in Munich. We splurged a little more here because it was our anniversary, so we got an apartment-like place with a small kitchen and back patio (still very reasonable and on the outskirts of town) called Hotel Gastehaus Englischr Garten. It was cute and cozy and right near the huge Englischer Garten where the locals frolicked, and where we experienced our first true beer garden.
In all our stops, Munich felt the most like America. People in suits, briefcase in hand, rushing to work. Less leisure, more seriousness during the day. But then the European feel would come roaring back in the evening as everyone set down to 3-4 hour dinners with their friends and family and plenty of wine or beer (why do we eat so fast in America?) Why don't we have these wonderfully long meals filled with meaningful conversation, with not one person playing on their cell phone while in the company of others?
We were lazier in Munich about sightseeing and instead just tried to behave like locals. Walking up the street for coffee, looking in bookstores, walking through the park, going to the grocery...we did go up into an old tower and of course went to some beer gardens and halls, but mostly, we just tried to soak everything in and stay warm since it was very chilly in July and we didn't bring anything warm to wear and didn't feel like buying something else to lug home. Munich definitely left us longing for a trip back to Germany to visit some of the older, more traditional German cities because it's much more modern than we envisioned.