The hot days and nights are starting to show signs of fatigue on the wandering warriors! So today is going to be the day to slow it down! So with a visit to a nearby town of Konigstein you would think this would be achievable.
Parted company with Bad Schandau and drove onto Konigstein - found another town in disarray with the extensive repairs evident all around. Had a little wander around the village, a coffee and then moved onto the very impressive and imposing castle, Festung Konigstein. What a monster! Just outstanding views up and down the Elbe River - and a beautiful day to capture the views.
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| Festung Konigstein |
It is here where we meet Augustus the Strong for the first time! August was the designer and builder of the remarkable city of Dresden after being impressed with the French Versailles. August also was instrumental in the building of this monumental castle at Konigstein. It is here that he imprisoned his court alchemist until he produced gold from the base metals! Instead he happened upon 'white gold' - porcelain.
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| Breathtaking views from the Konigstein castle |
It is thought that the name 'the strong' comes from either his enormous physical strength or the rumoured 370 illegitimate off spring that her is credited with - if we take this a true then there must be hundreds of thousands of descendants from this royal Casanova!
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| A touch of glamour at Konigstein |
Regardless, the setting of the castle is one of the most impressive we have seen. The views up and down the Elbe are nothing short of breathtaking. Given that we are nearly castles-out at this stage - this was just stunning.
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| ... and the beast! |
So much for a slow day! We spent hours traipsing over the large complex before walking back to the van - thankfully this was down hill today!
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| Stunning engineering of the 17th Century |
We did have the town of Pirna on our list but a drive through saw that it too was getting over the floods - we couldn't even cross the bridge over the Elbe because of the damage.
So we moved onto our over night at Feital - just outside Dresden.
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