Another day, another day trip.

This time I was off to the city of Dresden about 190km south of Berlin.

Weather forecast didn’t show any rain in my future, so fingers crossed, today would be easier to explore the city than yesterday.

Using the hostel kitchen

After stopping by a grocery store and settling for a makeshift sandwich for breakfast yesterday on the way to the train station, I upped my game a little for breakfast today.

Last night I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of eggs, some bacon, some gluten free bread, and a nice box of OJ.

And this morning, for possibly the third time in all my times staying at hostels, I used the hostel kitchen and made some breakfast.

Aside from the eggs sticking to the frying pan, it was pretty much a success if I do say so myself.

Not that this is going to open up the floodgates of me eating at hostels cause, honestly, eating out is one of the things I love about when I travel.

So, yeah, up at 9am and after a little breaky in me, I was out the door at 9:45 to walk to the train station for my 10:30 train.

Welcome to Dresden

At 12:30 our train pulled into Dresden’s main train station.

It was cold but the wind was far less than yesterday and the rain, well, it was nowhere to be found.

Moderate success!

I headed into the main part of the city to explore.

I only had 3 hours to explore today and while you think that’s ample amount of time, it’s amazing how quickly the time passes.

I genuinely hate having a return train ticket pre-purchased but you kind of have to because if you were to buy the same ticket today it would be 4 or 5 times the cost.

Anyway, just have to adapt and be plenty mindful of the time.

Exploring the town

I had a few landmarks marked on my map and I had already preplanned the route of how I’d walk through the city to see everything.

First stop was to the waterfront where Brühl’s Terrace overlooks the water.   Nicknamed “The Balcony of Europe”, the terrace stretches high above the bank of the river Elbe.

Next was Frauenkirche Dresden, or the Church of Our Lady, which stands quite dominantly in the center of town.   Sadly the church isn’t opened on the weekends so I just kind of took a couple of photos and went on my way.

A little further and around the corner was a street where the Fürstenzug was.   It’s a large mural of a mounted procession of the rulers of Saxony that was built in the late 19th century.

And right around the corner was my final stop of the day – Residenzschloss Dresden or Dresden Castle for us English speakers.

Exploring a castle

The castle is quite vast and has an optional option to go inside the Neues Grünes Gewölbe or the Green Vault which contains some of the royal jewels and treasures.

You can easily buy your ticket to the castle either online or in person but tickets for the Green Vault are only assigned a limited amount every 15 minutes.

I saw the time slots were all open when I checked online last night so figured I’d just book my slot when I got here today because I wasn’t exactly sure what time I’d be at the castle.

Well, that turned out to be a mistake.

When I got to the castle at 1:30, the next available time to visit the vault was at 3:15 and I immediately knew I wasn’t going to be seeing the vault today as my train back home left at 3:26.

Oh well, not the end of the world but I was kind of kicking myself for my self inflicted error by not booking it the night before.

As I said yesterday, I’m more of a visual learner so when I saw display after display in the different rooms of the castle, I was pretty happy.

There were rooms of uniforms and chainmail, weaponry, crowns and staffs, and even a room filled with different ancient coins.

Up a tower

Over to the side of the castle, built at the beginning of the 15th century, is the Hausmannsturm tower.

Entrance to the tower is included with your castle visit ticket so I popped in there.

It stands at 100m tall and there’s over 230 steps to get to the top.

Hmmm…

Do I?

I mean, honestly, my legs were still feeling pretty sore from the momentous climb up the monument yesterday.

Ah, screw it!   I love me a view from high above!

And it definately was worth the climb as you could easily see the entire town below from high up above.

A greasy burger

It was around 2pm when I left the castle.   I only had just over an hour until my train back to Berlin was leaving and, despite having a couple other things on my list to visit – namely Zwinger and Semperoper – I decided it was more important to get some food in my belly.

So, off I went for lunch.

Again, as with yesterday, I was craving something heavy and definately non German.

Yesterday was pizza and today it was a nice fat, juicy burger.

To even make it more non-German, I chose the French Burger which was a hamburger topped with brie and an apple pear chutney.

So good!

As I was finishing up, I quickly realized I had to boot it out of there to start heading back to the train station.

The station is either a 10 minute tram or 25 minute walk and as I left the restaurant I had 22 minutes til my train left.

In the end, it all worked out and as almost a reward for my awesome time management, I found a touque just sitting on a ledge with no one around to claim it.

All this time wishing I had a touque and one just magically appears!   My poor little ears will not be cold any longer on this trip!

Dinner for one

At 5:30 I had returned to Berlin and I was soon back at my hostel.

After vegging out for a little while I popped out to Shnitzelei restaurant yet again for the fourth night in a row.

The first couple nights I just walked in no problem and got a table.   Yesterday being Friday night when I arrived the restaurant was so much fuller and I ended up getting one of the last tables available right next to the bar.

Tonight I popped on the OpenTable app as I was walking back to the hostel and made a reservation for 7pm.   I wasn’t going to miss out on a table on what I presume would be a busy Saturday night.

So, sure enough, when I arrived the restaurant was packed and there were some people waiting outside.

Haha I thought, I’m so smart for sneaking in a reservation an hour ago.

Well, I told the man at front I had a reso and he couldn’t find me.   I showed him my email confirmation and then it became apparent what happened.

I guess when I tried to make the reservation for tonight it must have said there were no slots available and then it gave “alternative” time slots below.

I click the time slot for 7pm not realizing it was for Monday night in a couple of nights from now.

Well.   Yeah.

Anyway, he had me wait for about 10 minutes and I was able to get a table anyway.

And here I was thinking I was soooo smart.

For dinner tonight I tried yet another different German dish, Rinderroulade.   It’s a roulade of beef filled with onions, bacon and pickles served with string beans, mashed potatoes and sauce.

I also started with one of the tapas I had so loved yesterday – the Blutwurst blood sausage served with an apple compote.

The tapa was again amazing.   The main course, well, nah, not really.

I made up for it with dessert though.

Along with a tall glass of sour cherry juice, I chose the Toblerone Mousse which was just so creamy and light.

Sadly that would be my last visit to Schnitzelei as I leave for Hamburg tomorrow afternoon.

It’s been a great start to the trip here in Berlin but now it’s time to move on to the next set up adventures.

Hamburg, here I come…