Dresden

A couple of weekends ago was a holiday weekend in Germany, so decided to fill a gap on our map and headed out to Berlin with a stopover in Dresden.

We booked 2 rooms at Holiday Inn in Zwickau because having 5 people makes you over the limit for a double room. Well, the hotel was super nice and gave us 3 rooms; 2 adjoining and one right across the hall. Andrei and Ilya got to sleep in their own room and loved it. Dresden was lovely but cold; thankfully, I remembered our trip to Amsterdam last year and took hats and gloves.

Dresden is lovely touristy city – it has lots of walking streets and during this particular times it was busy but not crazy. We found a nice place to eat and were serviced pretty quickly which is always a good thing when eating out with 3 active busy boys. After lunch we decided to go on a horse drawn carriage ride and fun was had by all. The ride itself is about 30 minutes and goes through the center of the city.

Dresden was mostly destroyed during the war and that includes Frauenkirche which was originally built in 11th century, destroyed many times since then and the last post WWII reconstruction was started in 1994 and only finished in 2000. Neuemarkt where Frauenkirche is located also hosts a whole slew of fun activities. Boys loved the bubble making lady!

We also decided to visit Old Masters Gallery which houses paintings by Rembrandt, Rafael, Titian, etc. We are usually pretty good at getting the boys to enjoy the museums by providing them plenty of time to expand their energy before hand and promises of more running after the museum. This time was no different and the boys were not bad; however, our experience of the museum was seriously marred by the museum attendants who kept hushing and shushing us. I will be the first person to admit that the concept of quite voice is a bit stretched for Anton especially when you compare him to other patrons (you know … the retired crowd averaging 60 years old … ). Moreover, at one point Anton, Andrei and I sat on those round benches in the middle of the room and his short legs were not hanging low enough for one of the attendant’s liking so she came up to us and said “Kein Spielplatz!” (not a playground!) – dude, he is just sitting down and he is short! Anyway, I can honestly say that the museum was not enjoyable because of the atmosphere they created. Oh yeah, they also have super sensitive alarms that are set off every 3 minutes by ALL the patrons.

After Dresden, we heading out to Berlin ...