Adventures in Dresden

Getting to Dresden was nice and easy, plus we had some beautiful views from the train as we passed through the countryside. I think there was quite a bit of "Aaah, we should have gone there", especially when we saw houses built high up on hillsides with what I must assume would be amazing views to wake up to.

We stayed in a town called Radebeul just outside of Dresden with a lovely host called Barbara. Her house is at the bottom of a hillside covered in vineyards. Unfortunately for us we just missed the tasting season, otherwise we might never have made it into Dresden. According to Barbara it wouldn't have mattered too much, she said we'd seen all the best bits from the tram on the way to her house.

Barbara offered us some bikes to ride into Dresden and after a few wobbles we were on our way, riding alongside the Elbe all the way to the city. Surely it would be impossible to get lost? Wrong. At least we can blame a few diversions caused by whatever the equivalent of roadworks on a cycle path is called.

We did our usual unguided tour of the city, failing abysmally to use a map properly (my fault not Christine's) but did manage to see all the major sites. We think. It's impressive to think that almost the entire city got rebuilt after the war because they did such a great job restoring all the old buildings, the Zwinger was particlularly nice - a basically a park inside a palace. We danced in there, it's become our mission to dance everywhere we go!

Dresden's definitely worth a visit but we were glad to only have one day there. Unless you go with a wallet full of cash to see the museums it's easy to run out of things to see. Getting back to the house was a bit more of an adventure though. We left it a bit late and had to ride home in the dark. Christine was a bit brighter than me and had already realised they were a bad idea on the way into the city, I only realised when we were riding in pitch black (apart from bike lights - don't panic H&S geeks) and had no idea how to get across the river. We rode, and rode, and rode, and rode and rode some more. I miss my car!