Easter 2022: The opulent old town of Dresden

To get to Dresden, I flew to the nearby Grossenhain airfield that has a rich history of operation – 109 years! The flight from Lüneburg took a little more than 3 hours – headwind up to 30 kts, turbulence, and strong direct sunlight. I was so tired when I landed, that I decided to have a look around that historic airport another time, on my way back. I got a taxi to Grossenhain Cottbus, and from there – a train to Dresden.

Next morning in Dresden, the weather was even warmer. I stayed in a hotel in the old town, and looked forward to explore the city.

Who wants to have breakfast in a cold air-conditioned hotel restaurant when there is +21C outside? I found a table in a nice sunny place:

Dresden is a museum under open skies. Whenever you go – you can’t help stopping all the time to admire those wonderful pieces of timeless perfection:

Dresden is also difficult to photograph – everything is just grand and splendid:

The Church of Our Lady and its beautiful altar:

The Brühl’s Terrace, or the balcony of Europe, as it’s called – the terraces stretching high above Elbe, a perfect place to go for a stroll and watch (or buy) local art:

For afternoon tea, I decided to go for afternoon chocolate instead. There is this famous Camondas Kakaostube – a shop and a cafe with excellent quality chocolates and coffee specialties:

They do ice-cream, too. For just one scoop you need to give around 3 EUR! It’s not cheap, but high quality:

In their cafe, I ordered hot chocolate from Criollo cacao beans of Peru and some truffels:

The truffels were ok, I would say I like Peter Beier’s (best Danish chocolate brand) more. But the hot chocolate surpassed all expectations – it was heavenly delicious! I could definitely drink it all day long… Criollo is a very rare and prescious variety of cacao, one of the finest in the world.

I remembered that the best coffee in the world I had in a small Slovakian town Piestany. It was also on a flying vacation during Easter, in 2019.

Then there was time for some shopping. Here is the dress, I loved so much:

It was so delicate, almost fragile, and in a very subtle pale pink colour, like the first petals of a cherry tree. However, 3,000 EUR was too much for me – I’d have to work more and save more! And for 3,000 EUR I can buy lots of aviation fuel that would bring me to many wonderful places 🙂

I thought, Dresden would be a perfect place to go to an opera or concert. There were many good options, but I’ve seen those available operas so many times, and wanted something new. So I “settled” for an Easter gala concert in Zwinger Wallpavillon.

Dresden Zwinger is one of the most famous baroque complex in Germany, with gardens and palaces:

Just look at that!

I called Dresden the city of fountains – there were so many of them! Sumtuous, modern or primitive, all functioned well, and lots of water was pumping through them!

The building in far center was the Wallpavillion where my concert was going to take place:

The room was for about 100 people. It was possible to buy drinks; a glass of champagne 6 EUR – half a price what we give in Denmark at a concert, so I had two 🙂 Just kidding, only one!

The concert was outstanding. They played so passionately! There was also a female singer, who sang popular opera arias, like “O mio babbino caro”, and she was brilliant. A very young girl, and such a talent. I had permission to take pictures, but they didn’t turn out to be good enough to post here.

An evening could hardly be spent better. The Aviator didn’t get any champagne at the concert, so he demanded a glass of rosé sparkling when we got back to our hotel room: