Up and out early, our driver picks us up at 8, whisks us off to the airport and we are in our rental car and on the road a little before 10. The drive to Moritzburg takes us out of Berlin on the autobahn, always a fun drive as cars pass us like we are standing still – and we are going 120+ KPH.  Then into the countryside on little narrow roads bordered by fields and copses of woods. 

Our plan was to stop along the way at the Zschornaer Teiche, a birding area that looked like it had hiking trails around a small lake, for some walking and our picnic lunch.  The drive was gorgeous, the scenery beautiful, but the hiking?  Nope.  Turns out most of the hiking was on paved roads around the lake, which didn’t interest us. So even though beautiful, we decided to just head directly to Moritzburg and find a spot there.

Away we go on more empty roads through the countryside, safely arriving at a parking lot across the lake from the Moritzburg Castle.  Perfect place for our picnic – even if we are eating it in the car.

Lunch complete, we drive over to the main castle parking lot, then head out on the paths that circumnavigate the lake surrounding the castle.  It is a lovely walk full of wonderful views of the castle and nature.

Then into the castle, which was built in 1542, expanded over the years, and used exclusively as a hunting lodge for the Saxon electors and kings. Also known as the Japanese palace for the Augustus the Strong’s penchant for Japanese porcelain (an inventory from 1721 listed 13,000 pieces of porcelain).

Inside the castle – room after room of opulence. The entry hall or vestibule or I don’t know what with I don’t know how many deer/buck heads other walls. Then the gold room – again with more deer heads, only this time gold plated. And then the dining hall- again with the trophies! The dining room has the largest collection of antlers – 71 trophies, all between 270 and 400 years old.  The billiards room, with murals all along the walls.

But the best was the feather room.  A bedroom with wall hangings and bed canopy made completely of feathers – approximately 1 million peacock, pheasant, guinea hen and duck feathers woven into the canvas.  There is also a wonderful exhibition on the restoration of the room (it took 19 years!) and the process (washing them, drying them and stitching them back together).

A balcony leads us to a view of the king’s personal chapel, then we continued on to more opulent rooms – the walls are covered in 17^th century gold-gilded and painted leather – and finally on to the Arctic exhibition.

Yep Arctic.   Apparently, an explorer brought back Inuit from the Arctic and they gave “performances”- like flipping over a canoe while rowing.  The whole exhibition it has different artifacts, promotional posters and clothing worn by the Inuit people, plus a discussion about whether they were kidnapped and abused or there on their own free will.

Excellent visit. Made all the better by these VR tablets they gave you as a guide – you pointed the tablet and turned around through the room and it showed you how things looked in the 1700s – different figures were shown or explanations of different paintings and pictures.  We learned through the tablet that Augustus the Strong was quite the ladies’ man (read: slut).  He had one whole room devoted to portraits of his mistresses – the tablet explained how he met them (basically all family or other royalty) – and how many children he had with them.  A really neat find, although we will admit it sort of stretches the boundaries fs the definition of a hunting “lodge.” 

Now on to Dresden, which was an easy 25-minute drive away. We arrived at our sweet apartment, Papageiennest (the Parrots nest) and were greeted by Falk, the owner, then settled into our cozy little room above the parrot rescue Falk runs. He and his partner originally had a few parrots as pets, but then somehow people started bringing him their parrots when they couldn’t care for them any longer, and now he has 28! Sweet.

After organizing and stowing our bags, we hit Lidl for supplies, came back to watch the parrots, then went to Feldschlobchen Brewery for dinner. Excellent meal of pork knuckle – can’t come to Germany and not have pork knuckles – and the Feldi snack board that was filled with so much meat and cheese and bread, we ended up taking most of it home for snacks later!  The only bummer – the water! Ok. So we know they charge for water everywhere – and that is crazy .  But this was ridiculous. A glass of tap water – TAP water – cost 3.60 Euro. Insane! Thank God the food was good.

Then it was home to watch the parrots and off to bed with us.