Yesterday was a bland day filled with government bureaucracy. We registered ourselves as Dresden residents so we could wait a half an hour to register to make an appointment for our German visa that we won't even have until February. On the plus side, the tedious part is over until then. 

Today was a much more exciting day as we were able to explore the city on our own, and we had an amazing time. This morning we set out with some of the girls in our program to explore Prager Straße which is one of the shopping districts within Dresden. Jon and I explored this area the other day and we found this store:

We looked inside and it is pretty much identical to the T.J. Maxx's at home (only everything is in German), but it was fun to check it out!

Since we had already explored this area the other day, Jon and I split off from the rest of the group so we could go to Altstadt. It's the old city within Dresden and Dr. Gommlich took us on tour through Altstadt on Wednesday. I really wanted to go back as it has the older buildings within Dresden (plus I wanted to visit the Old Masters art museum). 

   

I am not sure if that is technically part of the Old Masters museum, but it is part of the courtyard that the museum is attached too. All of the building is beautiful, but that is my favorite entryway into the courtyard. We decided not to go through the museum today (mostly because we didn't have a euro to check our backpack), but we will be going to at some point! I look forward to seeing which paintings they have.

After the art museum, we walked over to the Royal Palace, which was rebuilt in 1701 by Augustus the Strong (who seems to have built a lot of the city structures that still remain in Dresden). The Palace was ruined by the bombing that occurred in World War II, but they have since restored it.

Thankfully, the collections that were in the Palace were not ruined during the bombing since they had been moved to the Königstein Fortress (which is where we will be going tomorrow). Since the collections have survived, the Palace is now a museum, which we will go through at some point (and Jon is pretty excited since one of the collections is an Armory).

After the Royal Palace, we were going to go to Neustadt which is on the other side of the Elbe,  but instead we opted to eat and visit the Frauenkirche,which is a Lutheran church.

 That statue of Martin Luther was actually one of the few structures in the City Center which wasn't ruined during the bombing. The morning after the bombing, the citizens found him on the ground and he was in one piece. The church, however, was not as lucky; after having survived the bombing, the dome collapsed. The citizens organized all the blocks that they could find (which were numbered) and when they rebuilt the church, they used the original block wherever they could. That is why the church is two different colors; the darker blocks were part of the original church.

The inside of the church was just as beautiful, and even though it said not to take pictures, we did.

The church has an organ as well, and at some point we are going to go to church service there so we can hear the organ play. I am sure that it sounds amazing, and I am really looking forward to hearing it. After leaving the church, we made our way back to the Hauptbahnhof, which is the main train station. There are a lot of shops around the Hauptbahnof, and  Jon and I wanted to go to the Asian market so we could stock up on items that other German grocery stores don't carry. In Jonathan's opinion, it is the only place in Germany that sells bowls too. 

Overall, today was a fantastic day, and tonight we are going to rest for our excursion tomorrow! We are going to the Saxon Switzerland, and if we have time we will make sure to write a post about it!