We woke up, packed our bags, checked out, and stowed our luggage with the front desk. There was fun getting the bill sorted out:

1. we had to get a refund on the internet service which never worked
2. we had to get breakfast charges removed, since we didn’t eat any
3. we had to get the room price adjusted, since they told us it was a free upgrade, then tried to charge the full rate anyway

Thankfully Roy is fluent in German so it was sorted out quickly.

Next was the train station to book tickets to Berlin - the train left at 2pm, so we had several hours to kill.

We headed to the Staatliche museum back in the theatre district. We were hoping for a proper breakfast at a restaurant/cafe inside the museum, but they weren’t serving until 11am. I settled for a carrot cake and cafe americano. It turned out to be a good choice… it was more of an orange bread than a carrot cake, and instead of a cream cheese frosting it just had a light glaze. The carrot decor on top was a tasty bit of marzipan.

The Staatliche is jam-freaking-packed with masterpieces. Rembrandt, Poussin, and even *the* Botticelli painting with the seriously over-exposed bored cherubs at the bottom. There were tons of interesting dutch things, which all have an interesting edge over the other crap. One painter kept doing “still life with…” over and over again. By still life, it was a table of freshly killed animals. There was always one or more dogs fighting with each other and drinking the animal blood, and almost always there was a monkey somewhere in the painting. Too funny. The other side of this heap was weaponry. Guns, knives, swords, armor, jousting poles, horse armor, children’s armor, spring loaded knives that you pierced with then opened to do massive damage. Oh the fun we had. It was really nifty.

We had hoped to go to the Hygiene museum, but we were both a bit tired, and would only be able to spend about 45 min there. We opted for a beer and sausage before heading back to the hotel for bags, then on to the train station.

Dresden is bleak. It was flattened during the war and rebuilt. It screams East Germany. It’s beautiful, but feels sad and worn out. There is obviously nowhere near the money Munich has, and it shows not just in the shops and streets, but in the public services, street cleaning, and transit. It’s also a tad overrun with tourists, even in the cold weather.