GERMANY - DAY 7

Today we left Berlin behind and headed for Dresden. It is known as 'Florence on the Elbe'. It is a beautiful place. It's amazing to think that over 80 percent of it was destroyed by bombing during the war.

We wandered around and saw the Zwinger Palace. This was a huge palace that surrounds a courtyard with garden beds full of flowers. You couldn't go inside but you could climb up onto the balconies along the roof and look about.

We then headed for the tiled wall showing all the kings of Germany. When Dresden was bombed this tiled wall was extremely lucky. Only 80 of the tiles that covered the entire side of a building were damaged.

Next we were taken on a tour of Grunes Gewolbe (The Green Vault), the richest treasure chambers in the world. It contains the unique gold-smithery items made by court jeweler Dinglinger, outstanding works of Baroque jewelry art. We saw the exceptionally precious green diamond hat clasp and the tiny cherry stone carvings. It was amazing to think that people were capable of carving 185 faces on one cherry stone. This is something that I don't think would be able to be done today by hand. The clocks were magnificent. There was one that had a glass ball that came out of a door at the top and traveled down around the outside of the clock sixteen times before going in a door at the bottom. While this was doing this another ball was being raised up the inside so as one ball went in a door another came out. It took exactly one minute for the ball to travel the sixteen spirals to the bottom. It's hard to fathom how they could work this out to the second.

We then boarded the bus and headed to Schloss Moritzburg, the hunting lodge and summer residence of Augustus the Strong. This man had seven mistresses in his time, some at the same time. His poor wife. We were even lucky enough to see a wedding taking place in the royal chapel.

It was then off to the nearby forest for cake and hot chocolate. Yummy baked cheesecake, German style with delicious hot chocolate.