Matt & Kims Big Trip: Dresden

Up we got for an early start to the day so that we could get onto the train for a day trip to Dresden. It only took about 2 hours on the train and we were there.

I really liked Dresden, it's a small city, 488,000 population. We left the main station and went for a walk to find the city centre which wasn't hard, just a matter of walking towards the tall church tops. Although we did make a detour past an H&M so that i could buy a warm jacket...Yes, it was a cold yuck day and my normal jumper wasn't good enough, and besides I'll need one for London soon as well (that was my excuse to Matt). I will admit that this jacket saved me a few times on this trip! Anyway... We continued to walk and found some really amazing buildings. The thing that got me was that Dresden was severely damaged in Feb 1945 due to carpet bombing in WWII and has also recently been through flooding, yet here it was looking amazing even in the bad weather! The highlights included:
The Market place & shops, there were cute alleys and roads with shops, cafe and restaurants on cobbled roads.
The Frauenkirche Church, This protestant church is known as the Stone Bell and was built between 1726 to 1743. It was destroyed in 1945 and has only recently been reconstructed 60years after the end of the war. What is cool is that they used a large amount of the old sandstone fragments retrieved from the rubble to rebuild it.
The Zwinger, this was my favourite, the building is built in a square around a huge courtyard of fountains and grass. You can walk to the top of the building and the view down is very cool.
The Catholic Hofkirche Church, and the current cathedral of Dresden are buildings of amazing architecture, most of which has had to be rebuilt or refurbished.
The German sausage, oh yeah this was really good, we saw this caravan shop in the middle of a square and wondered why there were so many people constantly around it just for a "hot dog", so we had to try it. Now we know why, the sausages were so good! and to make it better we ate it while looking over the Elbe River. Good food, good view, great times!
The Beer, Yes we did end up in a pub, but that was because it started to rain and we wanted to stay as dry as possible. We tried the Pils and the Oktoberfest Augestiner beer, both very nice.

After the pub, we braved the rain, it wasn't too bad, and headed back over the Elbe towards the station. We did get a bit wet so decided to have dinner inside the station to dry off a bit before we got back onto the train.

We really enjoyed our day of Dresden and again would recommend everyone to go there!

Next adventure....Munchen and the Oktoberfest!!!