Dresden: Zwinger Palace

Much to my delight, Dresden had a palace. The Zwinger Palace was modeled after Versailles: apparently after the King of Poland went there in the 1690's he wanted something equally as fabulous for himself (and who can blame him). Because the original palace was built as a fortification for the city and was no longer needed, he decided to give it a face lift. I think he did a pretty good job:

a moat... I want a house with a moat.

Not to shabby...just a casual summer home

Naturally I wanted to move in ASAP. Unfortunately most of the things inside the palace were closed so we just were able to walk around outside (for some reason most things in Dresden were closed- I guess that is the curse of the off-season traveler). Joseph and I had a great time walking around though and all and all Dresden was really amazing. My original impression of the city was super wrong and in this case: I loved being proved wrong!

Dresden: a walk around the city

Hygiene Museum: look my face is perfectly balanced that means I am beautiful! Score!

Initially, I was like, Dresden, oh I'm unimpressed. Because after Prague ("holy beautiful buildings everywhere") and Vienna ("what do I take a picture of, everything is amazing") I was initially a total snob. But that makes me super snobby since Dresden was basically raised to the ground in World War 2, so it's not like it' Dresden's fault or anything. Joseph and I went to the Hygiene Museum first, which was totally amazing. I would describe it like OMSI x100 it was so awesome! It was basically like an adult playground, there were tons of games and even a game where you put these brain things on and tried to get a ball to move by relaxing your brain waves... sounds crazy but it was fun! (And I lost twice.)

The second day we walked around a little bit and I felt bad for initially being so judgmental Although Dresden was completely destroyed, the residents were amazing and after World War 2 chose to build it all back. This church was built back, which is why the stones are all different colors:

And then we hit the mother load, and somehow stumbled on all these buildings:

Procession of the Dukes: a mosaic that shows the rulers of the area from 1100 to Fredric August III. It took almost 30,000 tiles to complete it.

Dresden is right on the Elbe River, which we crossed-

-to go to the most beautiful milk store in the world: my Mom had raved about how amazing it was, so we walked there and had to admit...it was pretty beautiful. Definitely the most beautiful milk store I have ever seen!

I took this but I didn't know you're not supposed to take pictures inside till Joseph was like "What are you doing?!" oops! 

On the way back we walked thru some gardens and I realized that my life's ambition is to be carved in stone and put in a garden. Here are some examples of how awesome it would/ could be:

I make a good statue, right? Now all I need to do is become super famous for something, get a large garden and I will make this happen! 

Little did I know the best was yet to come because (drum roll, please...) Dresden has a palace!! Which I didn't even know when we went there but was a total added bonus.