Today was museum day. We looked at the forecast and it called for clouds and thunderstorms in the afternoon. None of the museums open until 10 a.m. so we first went over to the Dresden tourist information center and purchased two museum-plus cards.

Our first stop was the Historic Green Vault. This is a unique historic museum that contains the largest collection of treasures in Europe. We’d heard that it can sell out so we wanted to make that our first stop and were able to get tickets for the 11 a.m. opening. Unfortunately, we are newbies and didn’t grab audio guides – not realizing the second half of the vault display would have no information cards. We decided this was ok because it meant we spent more time looking at the treasures than being distracted by our audio guides.

The Green Vault was amazing and full of beautiful treasures (no photos are allowed) but you can get a sense of the Green Vault by visiting this website: https://gruenes-gewoelbe.skd.museum/en/exhibitions/historisches-gruenes-gewoelbe/

Each of the eight rooms indicate the style of the exhibited objects in this order.. the Amber Cabinet, Ivory Room, White Silver Room and the Silver Gilt Room. Then we entered the Hall of Precious Objects which has precious-stones and natural art pieces such as ostrich eggs and rock crystals.

After the Green Vault we stopped by the store and picked up fixin’s for lunch because I was getting hangry (hungry/angry). After eating sandwiches, I enjoyed some tea and a chocolate coconut cake and Jacob took a quick nap.

After recharging we were back out the door across the street to the Zwinger, which was a palace and now has several museums. The first museum we stopped at was the Royal Cabinet of Mathematical and Physical Instruments. This museum had sun dials, telescopes, clocks and various other tools for measuring distance and height. Jacob was pointing out that on the face of the clocks it says where they were made and got too close and made the alarm go off, then security asked us to back away a little bit. Then we continued on our way.

After that museum, we walked over to the Old Masters Picture Gallery. This gallery is home to several famous art pieces including, Sistine Madonna by Raphael, The Sleeping Venus by Giorgione, The Chocolate Girl by Jean-Étienne Liotard and Charles de Solier, come de Morette by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Since the sun was out we decided to book it back to the apartment and grab my camera so we could go up to the top of the Frauenkirche and take some photos. Our new museum cards give us some discounts around town so we were able to use them here. We took an elevator, then some stairs, then a long ramp, then a ladder/like staircase then more stairs and made it to the top. We could see the rain clouds in the distance and within a few minutes it was raining all around us.

Soon it wasn’t just raining but there was also thunder and lightning, that’s when I’d had enough and said “Bye! Tschuss!” and made my way through the crowd squealing to the door. Jacob said I probably made it on a lot of people’s videos as I scurried out of there. Once we got inside the rain started really coming down.

We didn’t have much of a choice once we reached the bottom then to run to the next museum across the way at the Dresden Castle. Using our museum cards we entered the the Rüstkammer (Armory) and the Münzkabinett (Coin Cabinet). I think we saw maybe five other people in either section of the museum. Jacob said this surprised him because there were so many cool things to see, and I agree!

I just took some quick photos with my phone so the quality isn’t great but you can see how empty it was!

Since everything here closes at 6 p.m., we were once again faced with having to go outside into the storm. Luckily, we weren’t too far from the apartment so we jogged the rest of the way. Along the way there were strikes of lightning and claps of thunder. Under any overhang, or cover people were huddled waiting out the storm. By the time we got back to the apartment we were both soaked.

Thankfully, we bought food for dinner while we were at the store earlier so it was easy to make a hot meal for us to enjoy. We have our soaked clothes in the wash and now are sitting down to enjoy our evening. Jacob is watching the storm as it continues flash in the sky.

Tomorrow we will visit a few more museums, we may do some shopping and then we are attending a soccer match, the Dresden Dynamo against Holstein Kiel. Sunday we check out and head to Nuremburg. Only a few days left… Until then!