Starting point: Berlin, Germany
Duration: 2 days
Stay: airbnb shared room (30€)
Transportation:
- train (40€)
- bus (40€)
- local transport (9€ family day ticket)
- regional transport from Dresden (to reach national park 8–12 € each direction)
Tickets:
- The Neurathen Castle (4 €)
- The Pillnitz Schloss Park (6 €)
All mentoned prices are for 2 persons.
Day One.
Route: Berlin ➔ Dresden ➔ Stadt Wehlen ➔ Kurort Rathen (3h) ➔ Dresden
We left Berlin at 7:03 a.m. barely getting up and being ready for the train. It always seems to be hard to get up that early but this time it was a daylight at 5:30 a.m. plus it was already really warm and the weekend promised to be really hot. We took an EC type train stopping in Dresden and at around 9:00 a.m we were at the Dresden Central Station. We had a 30 minutes pause there till the next train to Stadt Wehlen where our hike route to Saxon-Switzerland National Park (the NP) should have begun. When you arrive to this village, you need to go to the Elbe river coast. You’ll find the NP on the opposite side of the river, there are no bridges and that’s why you’ll see a small ferry which will help you to get there. Our regional train ticket was still valid for this short sail in Stadt Wehlen but on the way back in another small village called Kurort Rathen we payed 1 euro per person for this 🤔.
Second, you can download some map for the hike before or just follow green signs with Bastei direction — that is the place that you actually want to visit. The signs might be sometimes misleading but in these cases we usually just follow other tourists and it works most of the time :) Don’t worry, you won’t get lost!
So, here is what you get after approximately 1.5 — 2h hike — awesome view to the Elbe river valley and to the strange shaped rocks.
After that point, the route will bring you to the Kurort Rathen. On your way you can visit the remains of the old castle which were built on these rocks. Also you will get the awesome view of Bastei Bridge, tiny bridges between rocks and much less amount of tourists. We totally recommend it.
Unfortunately, in Kurort Rathen we didn’t find good places for having a meal. We tried to get a couple of beers at the local Biergarten but the service was too slow, some guests weren’t served at all. So, we suggest you to wait with the proper meal till you get to Dresden.
Also the price for the ticket from Kurort Rathen was a bit higher then on the way to Stadt Wehlen so it is maybe worth purchasing the day, family or group ticket. It takes around 40–50 minutes to get back to Dresden (we were there around 3:00 p.m.), so you should have the whole afternoon to see it. Buuut…. after the hike and some beer together with 30°C weather, a huge laziness came and we were a bit tired to do a basic sightseeing (don’t do that if you wanna walk around).
So we just went directly to the first Forsquare suggested restaurant, sit under the tent, had a schnitzel and pelmeni (as a Russian I could say that it was really good and homemade) and just chilled with mojito afterwards for couple of hours. After that, we found our stay for the night and went to bed early.😴
Day 2.
Route: Dresden ➔ Pillnitz Schloss ➔ Dresden (Basic Sightseeing)
We got up around 10:00 a.m. without a strict plan. I knew that 2 hours are more then enough to take a slow walk throught the center (if going to the galleries and churches is not a part of the plan). The weather forecast was again 30°C without a single cloud. Figuring out what to do today, we had a chat with our nice host and he was kind enough to suggest visiting Pillnitz Palace outside of Dresden.
Purchasing the day family ticket we took a bus, then in an hour we were there. And I have to say the visit was worth this hour. The garden near the palace was really green with the huge amount of different plants and flowers. We could walk for hours in the shadow of the trees enjoying very nice sceneries. It really reminded us the Petergof Palace and it was definitely the best choice for spending the most warming-up hours of the day.
After that we went back to Dresden, had lunch at an Italian restaurant and we yet had 3 hours more to visit all the attractions of the downtown. I would say this amount of time was enough for that, we even chilled out at Zwinger for 30 min. All the basic attractions info you can easily find in every tour guide or by just opening google map, so I won’t bother you with that here. I can only say that we didn’t visit any galleries and museums in order to not make our trip exhausting. Leave this activity for a reason to come back.
p.s. if you need names and addresses of the restraunts where we have been and airbnb host — you can contact me directly and I’ll give you a hand.
