November 25th

It’s a Dresden day! 

I had purchased tickets in October to the green vault, a vault full of precious jewels and gold from royalty. I also bought the combo ticket to see the palace. Well they both were closed, there was a line at 10:00 and the lady, poor lady, had to tell all of us that they were closed. They said they would reimburse us. So...we had to find a plan B. We now know why the vault was closed, there was a robbery at 5 in the morning. Click here for the story. 

We went to the Catholic Church. Highly damaged in 1945 and rebuilt. 

Then we went to the Lutheran church, we saw the outside last night, so we looked inside today. Bryan went all the way up to the observation deck, I went part way up.  The basement was interesting, much of it was original to the building. They tried to keep as much of the original building material as possible. It was 2015 before the reconstruction was complete. 

Above photos are the Catholic Church

In and from the Lutheran Church, some beautiful views.

Volkswagen has a plant here for their electric vehicles. We took a tram there and basically had the place to ourselves. They have some retro looking concept cars and one called the ID3 that will be in production this fall. Up to this point they produce the Golf. The ID 3 will list at $30,000 €.  They don’t have any pickup trucks. 😩

November 24th

Moving Day!

Today we went by train from Prague to Dresden. The countryside was gorgeous, following alongside the Elbe the whole way. 

Dresden is the smallest city that we are visiting this trip. It tends to have large commercial hotels down in old town. Our hotel is part of the Clarian chain. Right after we checked in we went to the Zwinger Museum, specifically the Old Masters Gallery. It was a quick tour, lots of famous pieces, but mostly under renovation. 

Right at the end of WWII a big part of Dresden was anialated by allied forces. There were around 25,000 people that died in one day and much of old town destroyed. This included the Lutheran church,  Frauenkirche (The Church of Our Lady). 

November 23rd

This morning we were working our way to Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, which is really just a street. We were in desperate need of a good map, the streets are not marked very well and so between that and a bad map we were navigating like Columbus. Thankfully we found two information offices and two maps!  For breakfast we ran across a pancake shop, they were little silver dollar size yeast batter cakes rolled in sugar and cinnamon. They were yum!

Old Town Square

Wenceslas Square (Street)

Over the last three days we have walked a marathon, yes, 26 miles. So I told Bryan that taking some trams today was a good idea. We took the #2 up to the Prague Palace and St. Vitus Cathedral. We signed up for a guided tour and had a little young lady that spoke perfect English. The beginnings of this church dates all

the way back to AD 920. The church now in exsistance started being built in 1344 and finished in 1929. Many Kings, Queens, and Archbishops are buried here including St. Wenceslas. 

This window is not stained glass, it is a painting.  

This little square is close to our apartment. Had some good mulled wine here.