Day One as a Tourist in Dresden

Before I start on about today's adventures, I have to say being in a different time zone and having sleep mixed up is not great.  Case in point. We were so tired after our supper last night (leftover sangies), we went to bed.  I woke up around 9:30 and started working on the blog.  At 11:13 pm, Cathy woke up and asked what time it was.  I told her.  She got up, opened the black out curtains and said "It's still dark outside!".  What???  Took me a few minutes but then the light turned on.  She thought she'd slept through the night and it was 11:13 am.  We had a good laugh about it.

We did fall asleep around 1 am.  I woke up about 5:30 but thought there is no way I'm getting up.  Stayed asleep until about 9:30.  Perfect.  We showered, separately, stop it!  What a lovely shower!  Fantastic water pressure and the spray covered all of you.  I've had showers where a quarter of your body is wet at a time.  haha  This is pretty typical of most shower stalls in hotels in Germany.  Just enough space to shower.  No wasting precious real estate.  Those efficient  Germans!

We went down to the kitchen to make our breakfast.  Someone opened our brand new butter and used it!  I know the fridge is a community fridge but what the heck!  Labels are provided so guests can put their name on them and the date they are departing.  You can't make a mistake the food is yours to help yourself to.  The nerve of some people.  Our breakfast was typical German fare - brotchen and wurst (ours was Lyoner - kinda like baloney but not).  It was wonderful.  I had to watch myself that I don't moan out loud!

Christine, this was Cathy's smile after I said "Smile that's why we have teeth!".  This is a quote from the new Hunger Games movie Christine and I went to last Wednesday.

While waiting for Cathy to get a coffee, I took the next picture from the table we sat at to show you exactly how close we are to the train station.  The more hours I spend here, the more I realize what a prime location our hotel is in.

Cathy wanted a coffee.  Just a regular coffee.  That wasn't possible.  It was either an Amerikaner, Espresso or something else.  She settled on Amerikaner thinking it would taste close to a regular coffee.  Wrong!  The first sip and her face turned inside out.  I guess it was extremely strong.  It took her a bit to drink it but like your first couple of beers, she got used to the taste.

The hotel is decorated for Christmas.  It's nice!  Heck, just about anything in this town that can be decorated for Christmas is!  It's wonderful!

There's the permanent fixture as well.  Any good hotel or pub has to have a footy table!  Right?

Around 11 am, we walked to the bus stop to take the Hop on Hop off bus.  Our tickets were prebought online.  There were no problems getting them activated by the tour operator.  With the cold weather, we stayed on the bus the entire time as did most of the people on the tour.  I think if it were summer or nice cool fall weather, you would get off to see most of the sights on the tour.  The tour was about 90 minutes.  It was great to see so much of the city and the outlying areas especially the fancy houses where the rich used to live way back in the day.

Finished the tour, got out my friend, Live Google Maps, and headed to the Striezelmarkt (said to be the oldest Christmas market in Europe (1834)).  This gave me our bearings.  We went into a mall to find the bathroom.  Always have change with you if you need to go.  50 cents each to enter the bathroom.  After that we found a kiosk selling bratwurst (fried sausage).  We were not disappointed.  Also, usually you stand outside to eat it because you bought it from a kiosk.  This one, we could sit inside nice and warm.  Next to it is a place that sells schnitzel (all kinds).  We've decided this is where we'll have supper tonight.

Pretty decorations were throughout the Altemarkt Galeria mall.  I had to hold myself back from taking pictures of everything.  Who would have thought to decorate a tree with gold and purple?  That's thinking outside the box which is not something I do easily.  It was pretty.

So, today is the opening evening of the 2023 Dresden Christmas markets.  They open at 4 which I just realized was an hour ago.  I have a feeling it's going to be crazy with people.  It might be a good idea to tether my sister to me.  The City has nine different Christmas markets that run the length of a busy shopping street called Pragt Strasse.  It is only a block away from our hotel.  I'm tellin ya it's all about location, location, location.

Snow on the kiosks with the lights on at night is going to be beautiful.  I took the next picture this afternoon of a display on the roof of a kiosk.

 

After going back to our hotel for a rest, we left for the Christmas market.  Found two of them.  There are six more scattered throughtout the city.  We'll look for them tomorrow.

We walked five minutes and came to the first market.  It didn't disappoint.  Lots of lights, music and smells - food.  It had also started to snow which made it even more exciting.  Was there a lot of people on opening night?  You betcha.  That was okay.  We just pushed our way through the crowds.  No one complained.

Gluhwein anyone?  The amount of Gluhwein kiosks is equivalent to the number of Starbucks in Canada.  All of them had line ups and plenty of people were standing around drinking at tables.

Behind this facade was a set of steps.  I climbed them to try to get a panorama view of the market.  So many people were on that platform that I was a bit nervous that it might collapse.  I asked some people who were drinking their Gluhwein while leaning on the railing if they would let me in front of them to take a couple of pictures.  They did.  That's one thing Cathy remarked on - how friendly everyone is.  Complete strangers will say hello to you as you walk by.  Kinda nice.  Here are the pictures I took from up on the platform.  Not the best but that's okay.

We continued our walk and looked at different stalls.  It's crazy how much of a mark up there is for different items.  Cathy liked some small stars that have battery operated lights in them.  She was thinking they'd look nice hanging in a window.  She didn't buy them as they wanted  20 Euros for one.  In the mall we saw them for 5.95 a piece.  She might go back there and buy them.  Oh and they are exactly the same!

We had had enough after about an hour and a half of walking around so we went back to the mall to have supper at the same place we had a bratwurst earlier in the day.  This time we had schnitzel and fries.  It was good!  Very tender meat.  The cost was 11.90 Euros. It was worth it.

The above picture is the place where we bought our dinner.

After dinner we decided to go back to the hotel.  You can do that when you know you still have three days to go.  You don't have to do everything in one day.  The walk back to the hotel took about 15 minutes.  We now know why the fellow at the hotel desk looked at us oddly when we asked how to take the tram to and from the markets  haha!

As you know, it is cold here.  Tonight's light snow became hail.  It's good that we were dressed warmly.  At one point, while in the restaurant, I took my hat off.  Cathy burst out laughing.  I had BAD hat hair.  Thought I'd show you what I looked like when I took the hat off in our room.  Pretty no matter what!  haha

That's it for today.  We had a good time. Only had to pay to use a bathroom once!

Steps today - 19,828.  Yes, our feet are sore and our legs are tired!