Excellent Adventure 2018 Day 6 - Dresden

The tour for Dresden was scheduled to depart at 9:00 a.m. We had three choices:

• Classic - drive around Dresden on a bus, then go to a museum
• Turbo - exactly the same thing as Classic, only walk the entire thing, no buses
• Leisure - drive around the whole morning, with only a couple of brief stops.

We stuck with “Classic” - besides all the walking being too much, it was also way too hot. The temperatures in Prague were around 85 degrees. Here in Germany it’s 90 and above.

After an excellent breakfast, we boarded our bus. Kristina showed us various neighborhoods - some that were totally rebuilt after WWII, and some that had managed to survive the bombing. This is when we found out the name of the building we can see from our veranda - it is the offices of the Prime Minister of Saxony (basically the equivalent of a U.S. State Governor’s executive building). We also drove by the Saxony Parliament (the equivalent of a U.S. State house).

The highlight of the tour was the Green Vault, located in the Royal Palace and just a very small part of the very large museum.

Here are two photos of the Royal Palace courtyard:

The collection started with Augustus the Strong, who was both King of Poland and "elector" of Saxony (whatever that is) in the early 1700s. The collection is just stunning.

Here are a photos of a few items:

The Green Vault was the end of our quick tour around Dresden; back to the boat we went for lunch.

Benne had arranged for an extra activity - Viking paid for all of us to take a short river cruise on a paddle steam boat. All we had to do was walk down to the pier where the boat would be waiting for us.

We started walking, because we knew how long it would take us to get down there. Benne told us it was pier #7 - and it was a very long walk on cobblestone streets and sidewalks, very hot. By the time we arrived at pier #7, Benne was running up the street to tell us that there had been a change - it was pier #7! Back around we went, ending up at the back of the line, almost last on the boat, and no more seats in the shade.

With all that it was nice to be on the river. Here are some photos of castles we saw along the way:

At least the walk on the way back was a lot shorter than we thought it was going to be.

Shortly after we were back on the ship, there was a lace making demonstration. It was fascinating to watch the women move the bobbins around - even though there was a printed pattern for them to follow, I didn't see either one of them look at it as they worked. This is a sample of what they had for sale:

After another awesome dinner, we had a bit of a farewell to the crew of the Astrild. Weird enough, it was time to change ships - Tuesday would be a transition day, leaving Dresden and arriving at Wittenberg with a stop at the Meisson porcelain factory along the way.

At 9:00 p.m., we were treated to a mini-concert by a trio (flue, violin, and cello) from the Opera company. They played Mozart and Haydn pieces, which were exquisite. They ended their concert with ragtime by Scott Joplin.

A very long day - to be followed by an early start to another very long day.

Tomorrow: Meissen