Day 5, Thursday April 18th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:

Day 5 (April 18) – the one thing I wanted to do in Dresden besides meet Katja was to see a castle! So after brunch we went to @schlossmoritzburg. Then we rode the Schwebebahn, which I only found out about from the Dresden Starbucks mug I bought that morning 😂 We ended the evening with a walk 🥹

SLEEPING IN

Thursday! Our wonderful leisurely day! It was amazing to sleep in and recharge for the rest of our trip. This was the last day that it was just the two of us (which we actually didn’t know until later in the day but more on that at below). Spending time with our friends made this trip much more special and enjoyable than I could have ever imagined. Truly. But having a day with no plans, and being able to sleep in in the middle of all that? Perfection!

I did not wake up until 8:47! That’s so late for me! It was amazing!

RUN

I started my run at 9:24. I had originally planned to run from our hotel right to Großer Garten, but on our first day in Dresden I saw there was a path along the River Elbe, so I checked that out first then ran to the garden.

I had a lovely run! I enjoyed running through the historic part of town, then seeing some of the more modern buildings, and the park. Toward the end, someone stopped me to ask for directions in German. I was like “No sprekense Deutch I speak English sorry guten morgen.” Ha. They kept talking and I was like… shrug? Then I wished them luck and they were on their way.

Oh! And I have to comment – it AMAZES me how the Germans wait for the walk sign even if there is no traffic coming. Wonderful. I loved it.

I stopped and got a chai and bought the Dresden Starbucks mug. I noticed a cable car on it, which I hadn’t seen on any of my (very light, let’s be real) research, so I decided to look that up when I got back to the hotel.

“PLANNING THE DAY”

Steven was working when I got back (he had told me he’d have to work on Thursday) so I took my time taking a shower, then got my computer out to download pics and research the cable car I found on the mug (this was the only time I turned my computer on the entire trip!). I learned Dresden has a funicular and a cable car. The funicular was not operating, but the Schwebebahn (cable car) was and I put it on our calendar for later in the day.

I found a place for us to eat brunch (like, at an actual hipster brunch time – 1:00 pm!) and we decided to ask the front desk which castle we should visit. They recommended Schloss Moritzburg, which was only a 30 minute drive. Woo hoo! That was one we were considering.

BRUNCH

But first, brunch! We drove to Vcake and Steven got coffee, I got a Biscoff latte, and we got the breakfast for two to share.

Look at all this food! For two! Insane!

It was delish. The tofu eggs were my fave, and I think the cheese spread was Steven’s. This is a habit of mine when we travel “what did you like most from this meal?” “what’s the best meal you had today?”  “where did you have the best coffee?” “If you had to move to one of this countries, which would you choose?” I’m truly a pleasure to be around. Wink.

It was nice to sit and relax – we really leaned in to that during our meals in Europe, when possible.

They had several cakes, and we also got a slice of karamell krokoust and nussecke to go.

VEGAN BUTCHER

Afterward we walked to Die Vegane Fleischerei – the vegan butcher! On the way we stopped at a fun little shop, and saw a Domino’s and marveled at their long plant based menu (really, wth, USA!).

The vegan butcher is exactly what you’d imagine (wait, you don’t imagine that?!) – a butcher shop but all vegan meats and cheeses! We chatted a bit and got a pastrami sandwich to have later.

SCHLOSS MORITZBURG

Schloss Moritzburg was easy to get to and had plenty of parking out front (which unfortunately required downloading yet another parking app, ha).

The castle is surrounded by water, and has beautiful grounds.

I hid a castle rock there –

We paid to do the inside tour (the grounds were free), which included a personal electronic device that was interactive with the rooms you visited – you scanned something then held it up and it would show you what the room looked like back in the day, with little movies, music, extra tidbits. It was neat.

But also repetitive. This was basically a pleasure/hunting castle so it was just a lot of partying!

We left and ate our pastrami sandwich (yum!) on the grounds,

then drove around town a bit, including to see the lighthouse

and little baby castle associated with grounds.

We dropped some postcards out there, in the middle of nowhere by the baby castle.

SCHWEBEBAHN

We drove back in to town to check out the Schwebebahn. We parked in a nearby parking lot then walked over. The Schwebebahn went up and down every 15 minutes. It’s just a 5 minute ride!

It starts out on a track,

then becomes a cable car.

What the carriage (is that the right word?) looks like

There was a beautiful view on top. I forgot to mention – no rain this day! AMAZING!!!! It was so nice to have a break from the rain!

We wandered around that neighborhood a bit to check out the architecture, then headed back to the hotel. I was hoping I could make it to Aldi before it closed at 8:00.

PARKING GARAGE TROUBLE AGAIN!

When we got back to park in our hotel parking garage there were no spots available! We put our flashers on and went up to the front desk to ask what we should do.

Our German isn’t great and neither was the hotel employee’s English, but she asked if we checked the other level of parking. She described how to get there, and we weren’t following. The entire time we’d been using the garage we hadn’t seen this other level, and weren’t sure where to go.

We didn’t want to get into a situation where we were stuck in the garage (like on the previous day when we didn’t validate our ticket in Leipzig, oops) so we got a ticket to leave the garage just in case and went back down. As we were walking around looking for this elusive second level, we found a parking spot that we had completely missed before!

It made our car look like it was on display in the elevator lobby:

When we were leaving the next day to go to the airport, we realized the second level of parking was past the “ausfahrt” (aka car exit) and the signage for it was roped off so we thought we weren’t supposed to go there.

Did we think the word ausfahrt was very funny? Yes we did.

That reminds me! Ausfahrts were very well marked on the German highways. It was nice. While I did not always understand the signage in Germany, I appreciated how much signage there was.

RUSH TO ALDI

Okay, so we parked at like, 7:55 and Aldi closed at 8:00 and I really wanted to see what it was like! I ran over there and got in at 8:01. I felt bad going in after they were closed but there was still a line checking out and I just wanted to see what it was like! I did a video call with my snis so she could see too. It gave me old school (pre remodel) Aldi vibes.

I’ve been shopping at Aldi since I was a child so to check one out in the Motherland was a big deal to me

VEGAN FAST FOOD AND MORE WANDERING

Our big plans for the night were to try vegan fast food, and to explore the area by the river, cross the bridge, and come back.

First we tried vegan KFC. Not great, but not bad! Just so so!

Then we walked over to the river area. There was a film festival going on:

We went on to Brühlsche Terrasse:

While we were walking about, Anita text me that she had worked out how to come visit us in Bruges on Sunday!!! She said she’d be driving down with her husband and three kids. We were really excited we’d get to see them again, and meet the kids! It means so much to me that they did that, but I’m sure I’ll write about that more when I write that day’s recap post.

We crossed the bridge,

then came back and got vegan McDonald’s to try… past 10:00 pm! Ha! (Our meals were so off this day – breakfast at 1:30, lunch at 5:00, dinner at 8:30 and 10:20… but we totally didn’t mind! Vacay, baby!) The nuggets tasted really similar to the real ones. You’d think I wouldn’t remember them, since I haven’t had meat in 24 years, but I worked at McDonalds in the 1990s, so I remember them well.

Oh! And we had our goodies from Vcake! Very good!

I completely unpacked and repacked the suitcases, and went to bed past midnight. Steven still had work to do, so he stayed up working until 2:00 am. Eek! But that was the only day he had to work that much. He was mostly able to take a break from work and had his phone on DND for the entire trip, and really enjoyed that (I did too! I’m so glad he actually got to be present. I wasn’t sure how possible that would be for a small business owner.).