5 Days in Munich — Beer Gardens, Bavarian Castles, and Germany’s Most Livable City

I almost didn’t go to Munich. I had a long weekend in Europe, a cheap flight to anywhere, and a vague sense that Germany meant gray skies and sausages. A friend who had spent a semester in Bavaria basically shook me by the shoulders. “Munich,” she said, “is not what you think it is.” She was right, and I’m embarrassed it took me until my early thirties to find that out. What I discovered was a city that somehow manages to be ancient and modern, boisterous and refined, outdoorsy and cultured, all at once. The beer is extraordinary. The architecture will stop you mid-stride. The day trips are some of the best in Europe. I went for five days and came home wishing I had booked ten. This is the itinerary I wish someone had handed me before I left.

Day 1: Marienplatz, the Viktualienmarkt, and Your First Hofbräuhaus

There is a reason everyone tells you to start at Marienplatz. The square earns its reputation. Standing in the center and looking up at the neo-Gothic façade of the New Town Hall feels like stumbling into a fairy tale that someone built at civic scale. If your timing is right — 11am or noon — you’ll catch the Glockenspiel chiming through its 32-figure automated pageant, a mechanical performance that has been delighting and mildly confusing tourists since 1908. The figures depict a 16th-century jousting tournament and a dance celebrating the end of the plague. Only in Munich does this seem like a perfectly normal thing to install in a clock tower.

From Marienplatz, walk five minutes south to the Viktualienmarkt, the city’s beloved open-air food market. This is not a tourist trap dressed up as a local institution — it is an actual local institution that tourists are lucky enough to be allowed into. The stalls sell everything from handmade pretzels the size of your face to obscure Alpine cheeses to fresh-cut flowers. Grab a Weißwurst (white sausage, served with sweet mustard and a pretzel), wash it down with a Weizen beer from the market’s own beer garden, and take your time. There is no rushing this place.

For dinner, lean into the cliché and head to the Hofbräuhaus. Yes, it is touristy. Yes, it is loud. Yes, you will be seated next to a table of Australians celebrating something. Go anyway. The hall has been serving beer since 1589, and sitting inside it with a liter stein in hand and an oompah band playing twenty feet away is one of those experiences that is exactly as fun as it sounds. Book ahead for a guaranteed table inside the main hall, especially on weekends, or arrive before 6pm and take your chances at the door.

“Munich reveals itself slowly. The first day you see a beautiful city. By the third day, you start to understand why people never leave.”

Before you collapse from jet lag and beer, take an evening stroll through Viktualienmarkt toward the Isartor, one of the old city gates. The floodlit towers at night are a quieter, more contemplative version of the daytime crowds. It sets the tone for everything that follows.

• Glockenspiel chimes at 11am and noon (and 5pm in summer)
• Viktualienmarkt is closed Sundays — plan accordingly
• Hofbräuhaus gets extremely crowded after 7pm on weekends

Day 2: Nymphenburg Palace, the English Garden, and a Real Beer Garden

Shake off Day 1 with a morning tram ride out to Nymphenburg Palace, the summer residence of Bavarian royalty. The palace itself is grand in that particular 17th-century way — symmetrical, white, relentlessly formal — but the grounds are the real attraction. More than 500 acres of landscaped gardens, canals, and forested walking paths stretch behind the main building. In summer, swans drift across the reflecting pool. In winter, the bare trees and frost-covered paths have their own austere beauty. Either way, allow at least two hours to walk it properly.

Inside the palace, don’t miss the Gallery of Beauties, a collection of 36 portraits commissioned by King Ludwig I of women he found attractive, ranging from aristocrats to a shoemaker’s daughter. It is strange and fascinating and very 19th century. A guided tour of the palace interior puts the history in context and is well worth the extra time, particularly if you want to understand the arc of Wittelsbach ambition that eventually produced the castles you’ll see on Day 3.

After Nymphenburg, take the U-Bahn to the English Garden — at 1.5 times the size of Central Park, it is one of the largest urban parks in the world. The defining spectacle is the artificial river wave at the Eisbach, where surfers ride a standing wave around the clock. Watch for ten minutes, be confused, be delighted, repeat. Then walk north through the park to the Chinese Tower beer garden, a 7,000-seat institution that operates on a simple and brilliant model: bring your own food, buy your beer from the garden, sit wherever you like, talk to strangers. The Chinese Tower beer garden is the quintessential Munich afternoon — leisurely, communal, and impossible to rush.

If you have energy left in the evening, head to the Schwabing neighborhood for dinner. This is Munich’s bohemian quarter, full of independent restaurants, wine bars, and cafés that have no interest in pretending to be tourist attractions.

1. Nymphenburg opens at 9am — arrive early before tour groups
2. Rent a bike near the English Garden entrance for the full experience
3. Beer garden etiquette: self-service section allows outside food, waiter section does not

Day 3: Day Trip to Neuschwanstein Castle

On Day 3, wake up early. This is not negotiable. Neuschwanstein Castle, the 19th-century fantasy fortress that inspired Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland, is approximately two hours from Munich by train. The first train out of Munich Hauptbahnhof toward Füssen gives you the best chance of beating the crowds — and the crowds are real. On peak summer days, Neuschwanstein sees upwards of 6,000 visitors. The castle was never finished, the king who ordered it (Ludwig II) died under mysterious circumstances before it was complete, and it has been open to gawking tourists for longer than it was ever a functioning royal residence. None of that diminishes it. Standing on the Marienbrücke bridge and looking at the castle perched against the forested cliff above you is genuinely, almost embarrassingly, magnificent.

A guided day trip from Munich to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau is the most efficient way to do this without logistics headaches. A good tour will include both castles — Neuschwanstein above and Hohenschwangau below, the yellow castle where Ludwig actually grew up — along with transport and timed entry tickets. Timed entry matters enormously here. Without one, you can wait two hours or more in high season.

The village of Hohenschwangau at the base of the castles has a few good lunch spots. Try the restaurant at the base of Hohenschwangau Castle for Bavarian classics with a view. After lunch, if time permits, walk around Alpsee Lake — a 40-minute flat loop through meadows and forest with the castles visible behind you. It is one of those walks that you will describe to people for years.

The train back to Munich takes you through the Bavarian countryside as the light softens in the late afternoon. It is a good time to be quiet and look out the window.

“Neuschwanstein is not a real castle in any serious historical sense. It is the dream of what a castle should feel like, built by a man who preferred dreams to reality. That is its genius.”

• Book Neuschwanstein tickets weeks in advance in summer — they sell out
• Wear comfortable shoes; the uphill walk to the castle is steep
• The Marienbrücke bridge can be closed in winter due to ice
• Combining Neuschwanstein with Linderhof Palace makes a full Bavarian castles day

Day 4: Dachau Memorial, BMW World, and the Olympic Park

Day 4 asks more of you emotionally, but it is one of the most important days on this itinerary. The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site is 30 minutes by S-Bahn and bus from central Munich. It was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime in 1933 and operated until liberated by American forces in 1945. The memorial is somber, carefully documented, and morally essential — particularly if, like me, you find that traveling through Europe occasionally requires confronting the history that made it what it is. Allow two to three hours. The museum and grounds are free to enter.

A guided tour to Dachau from Munich is worth considering, not because the site is hard to navigate on your own — it is well-signed in multiple languages — but because having a guide helps structure the emotional and historical weight of what you’re seeing. A good guide provides context about how ordinary the perpetrators were, how the system functioned, and what the liberation looked like. That context changes how you absorb the experience.

Return to Munich in the early afternoon and shift gears completely with a visit to BMW World (BMW Welt) and the adjoining BMW Museum near the Olympic Park. You do not need to care about cars to enjoy BMW Welt — it is a spectacular piece of contemporary architecture and the exhibits on automotive design and future mobility are genuinely interesting. Entry to BMW Welt itself is free; the museum next door charges a small fee and is worth it for the design history alone.

The Olympic Park from the 1972 Munich Games is right next door. The tent-structure rooflines are still striking fifty years later. Walk the grounds, climb the Olympic Tower for panoramic views of Munich and the Alps on clear days, and think about the complicated history the park carries — the 1972 Games were overshadowed by the terrorist attack that killed eleven Israeli athletes. A memorial on the grounds marks the site. The park today is alive with joggers, cyclists, and families, which is its own kind of answer to that history.

1. Dachau is best visited in the morning before emotional fatigue sets in
2. BMW Welt and Museum are open Tuesday through Sunday
3. The Olympic Tower restaurant offers a rotating panoramic lunch

Day 5: Residenz Palace, One Last Beer Garden, and Departure

Save the Munich Residenz for your final full morning — it is the most underrated major attraction in Munich, visited by far fewer tourists than it deserves. The Residenz was the official royal palace of the Wittelsbach dynasty for four centuries and today houses 130 rooms open to the public, including the jaw-dropping Antiquarium (a barrel-vaulted Renaissance hall covered floor to ceiling in frescoes), the ornate Cuvilliés Theatre, and the royal treasury full of crowns, swords, and regalia. A guided tour of the Residenz will steer you through the most significant rooms and save you from spending three hours lost in the wings, which is easy to do.

After the Residenz, walk ten minutes to the Hofgarten, the formal garden attached to the palace, for a coffee and a moment of stillness before the city gets loud again. Then make your way back toward Marienplatz and find your last Munich lunch at Augustiner-Keller, one of the city’s oldest and most respected traditional restaurants. The roast pork with potato dumplings is exactly what you want on your last afternoon. The beer, brewed by one of Munich’s original breweries, is excellent.

If your flight is evening, spend the last hours of daylight in whichever beer garden called to you most during the week. Mine was back in the English Garden — a liter of Helles, a paperback, and the sound of the city doing what Munich does best: living well, loudly, and without apology.

“A beer garden in Munich on a warm afternoon is not just a place to drink. It is an argument, made in amber light and chestnut trees, for a certain way of being in the world.”

• The Residenz treasury closes one hour before the palace — plan accordingly
• Augustiner-Keller has a large beer garden attached — lunch can become afternoon
• Munich airport is 40 minutes by S-Bahn — allow 90 minutes minimum from the city center

Practical Tips: Getting There, Getting Around, and Getting It Right

Munich is one of Europe’s most logistically straightforward cities to visit, which makes planning easier than almost anywhere else at this level of ambition.

Flights: Munich Franz Josef Strauss Airport (MUC) is a major European hub served by dozens of carriers. Search for flights to Munich at least six weeks in advance for the best fares from North America or the UK. Lufthansa, British Airways, and several budget carriers operate frequent routes. The S8 and S1 S-Bahn lines connect the airport to the city center in about 40 minutes for a few euros.

Getting around the city: Munich’s public transport (MVV) is excellent. A single-day or multi-day ticket covers U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams, and buses across the inner zones and is far cheaper than taxis. The city center is also very walkable — Marienplatz to the English Garden is under 30 minutes on foot. Pre-book an airport transfer if you arrive late or with heavy luggage and want to skip the S-Bahn logistics.

Car rental for castle day trips: If you want flexibility for Day 3 or to explore the Bavarian countryside beyond the train network, renting a car in Munich gives you access to routes and villages no tour bus visits. Driving in Bavaria is straightforward, the roads are in excellent condition, and parking near Neuschwanstein (in the village, not at the base) is manageable if you arrive early.

Where to stay: The area around Maxvorstadt (near the museums) or Gärtnerplatzviertel (the lively southern quarter) offers good access to both the historic center and the English Garden without being in the thick of the tourist grid. Book your Munich hotel well in advance, especially for late spring through September when the city fills up fast. Prices spike dramatically during Oktoberfest (late September to early October) — either embrace it and book many months out, or plan your trip for a different window.

Money and tipping: Germany is more cash-friendly than most of Western Europe. Many beer gardens and smaller restaurants still prefer or exclusively take cash. Carry euros. Tipping is expected but not at American levels — rounding up or leaving 5–10% is standard and appreciated.

Language: You will be fine with English in Munich — it is one of the most English-fluent cities in Germany. That said, learning a few words of German (and Bavarian: Grüß Gott instead of Hallo, Servus for both hello and goodbye) earns genuine warmth from locals.

Summary of what to book before you leave:

1. Flights into MUC — search early for best fares
2. Hotel in Maxvorstadt or Gärtnerplatzviertel — at least 8 weeks out
3. Neuschwanstein timed entry tickets — book the moment you know your travel dates
4. Guided Neuschwanstein day trip (optional but highly recommended)
5. Dachau guided tour (optional but adds significant depth)
6. Residenz guided tour — book a few days out at minimum
7. Hofbräuhaus table reservation for weekends

Munich rewards the people who show up and slow down. It is not a city to rush. The beer gardens were designed, quite deliberately, to make that point.