Saxony, land of cake and mountains

The second part of our trip was through the German state of Saxony, to Dresden. We planned some extra days on this part, because I didn't want to bicycle non-stop and I was looking for an excuse to use my German.

The food has been very good on the trip. I'm with someone whose culinary tastes roughly coincide with mine, which means he's willing to walk a bit further for a good restaurant or stop for beer at opportune times. Even more importantly for me, more than half of the restaurants we saw had at least one vegetarian option, which was a delightful change of pace from the situations I encounter in Madrid. 

I had realized it would be asparagus season in Germany, which is a really big deal here. Most restaurants had a special asparagus menus. The most innovative dish we had was a chicken burger overlaid with large white asparagus stalks and hollandaise sauce.

We had time for several hikes with excellent views. There is a huge national park that spans the much of the area. It's unique both for its sandstone formations, but also because of the huge swaps of dying spruce trees. They have a bark beetle invasion and the foresters have decided to let nature take its course, so that the native birch will replace the planted spruce.

One additional transportation system- a train that travels from suspended rails up a mountain. R has a special place in his heart for trams, but my favorites were the ferries.

As A noted on the last entry, we had great weather. Its probably best to do something like this in the shoulder season when it's not too hot or cold, but we had been prepared for a lot more rain. My opinion is that cycling in rain isn't too bad if you know you have dry clothes and a hot shower when you arrive.

I think the Germans make really good cake and torte, so it had been my request that we eat cake every day that we were in Germany. I am happy to say that we achieved our goal.