We headed off to take advantage of the free walking tours that our bus ticket entitles us to. One of the amazing things about Dresden is the lack of any English-speaking tourists and the locals were intrigued as to why we came all the way from Australia as they most of their visitors are German. We had two of the three tours to ourselves and shared the last one with 3 Norwegians who spoke both English and German and opted for the smaller group. We learnt much about the city and its history which seems to revolve around August the Strong who expanded both the kingdom and its holdings. On one wall of the Royal Palace there is a huge mural that miraculously survived the bombing. It was seven years in the making and details where Dresden (and Saxony) started. An amazing piece of artwork completed in Meissen porcelain tiles and it is over 100m long. We also learnt the story of the Frauenkirche, one of the huge town churches which fell after the firestorm on 1945 and has been rebuilt by donations from all over the world. Of course, we climbed to the top. Our last stop was the Zswinger. This was a museum founded by August and has an amazing collection of scientific instruments which enabled them to determine time and space back in the 1700s. We passed on the porcelain and art museums as we just didn’t have the time. Found a nice little brewery, again with great German cuisine (and beer 😊)
