We headed out of the big smoke of Berlin to the small city of Dresden.
Another day, another Christmas market…
The town square with the beautiful Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), sadly destroyed in WWII but since faithfully reconstructed in the 90s with donations from the townspeople. The interior has been authentically reproduced in the Baroque style with pastel frescos and gold cherubs aplenty, while the crypt is a stunning contemporary design – truly inspired if you ask me.
It wasn’t just the church that was destroyed during the war; virtually the entire old centre was reduced to rubble, as well as tens of thousands of casualties.
Therefore what we saw were new buildings recreated in the original style. It’s impossible to resist the charm of cobblestones and row upon row of ornate buildings, however it did have a feeling of being a bit too perfect and neat, almost Disney-fied.
Alas, we didn’t have time for a tour of the art gallery (it looked excellent) so we instead had a look at the medieval Festung (fortress).
We finished the day with a meal at a lovely Italian restaurant near the Semper Oper (Opera House).
I would be remiss if I didn’t share photos of our hotel in Dresden. Since we were visiting in winter, we were able to score some surprisingly affordable room rates at some really interesting hotels. This is one of the Art’Otel chains, each of which has a different resident artist whose work is featured exclusively throughout the hotel.
The Man testing out the opaque-ify switch (yes, I totally just make up that term) on the bathroom window.
After exhausting the novelties of the hotel, we took a short stroll to the Zwinger (fortified palace), now the home of an impressive collection of art and porcelain.
And then many…
many…
many…
… more beautiful buildings.
One of which was the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault), a collection of all kinds of precious artefects arranged by material, such as silver, gold, coral, ivory, mother-of-pearl and gemstones. The detail and craftsmanship (not to mention obscene wealth!) were mindblowing.
And with that, we said goodbye to Germany – for the time being at least.
Lovely pictures. Keep posting !
Glad you’re enjoying them, Cha!
Hi Alicia!
And oh NO! Yopu´ve had really terrible weather while your trip to my hometown. That´s a shame, because it´s such a wonderfull city. But this year with the darkest winter ever, it looks not very nice.
But nevertheless you gave me an other point of view and give me with this post some direction I have to where I want go with my boys. The medieval fortress (known as the catacombs) will be the first I must show them. Really!
And if you ever want to stay in Dresden, give me a short massage, you are welcme here at my home (untill that I hoe my english is much better so that I can guide you and show you some places out of the touristic paths
Thanks also for your comment on my blog. I tried to figure out many things in my layout, done it by myself, bute blogger is sometimes a really horrible thing. Not everythings matches in the way I want it. Lot to learn I think
Many greetings
Katja
Hi Katja
The weather was a little miserable it’s true, but it didn’t make the city any less beautiful! Plus, it’s much easier to photograph when there’s a cloudy sky! I think the fortress would be fun for the kids. They can pretend to shoot arrows out at their enemies.
Oh aren’t you sweet, thank you for your offer! I wish I had done the Blogging Your Way course before I went to Europe, I’ve “met” so many lovely people from some of the places we visited.
I know what you mean about blog design where things don’t always look how you want them to. I dislike doing it so much that I’ve finally hired a developer to do it for me!
Alicia
Sorry for mistakes … it was to late to change them into the correct way
Don’t apologise, your English is excellent! After three weeks in Germany & Austria I could still barely order a cup of coffee…
Ahem… even though I did most of the hard work on this one… ahem…
I was going to give a huge shout-out at the end of the series but yes I must give credit to The Man as we shared the photography duties this time.