Schloss Pillnitz and Dresden Zoo

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It's been busy since the start of the new year! I spent New Year's Eve in Munich with Johnny, then I helped him move to Dresden. He's taking classes at the same school that I go to now too, the Goethe Institut. He's already visited Dresden before, but only for a very short visit so I've been taking him to see the sights. We had pretty much covered everything in the Altstadt, so we decided to take a day trip to the school to a castle called Pillnitz which is about 20 kilometers away. We were lucky it was a nice day, it's been so unbelievably cold here but over the weekend it warmed up a lot, so a lot of the snow started to melt. I had already visited the castle with my parents last year, but it's beautiful and I was happy to see it again and especially to try out my camera. I don't know too much of the history behind the castle, but I find it particularly interesting because it's so colorful and has asian influences in the architecture, which I found surprising for Germany. It was also pretty impressive to find out that it was just a "summer home."
After our group finished touring the castle, we went to a high lookout point to get a view of all of Dresden. To get to the top we took a cable car up, it was pretty interesting I hadn't seen one like that before. There was also a really nice town at the top. After walking around a bit we got to the view, it was a little cloudy but still very beautiful.
There is a class trip next weekend to another castle called Schloss Moritzburg. I haven't been to that one at all yet and the pictures I have seen all look beautiful, we might go to that next Saturday too.

I've also already been to the zoo here in Dresden, but I love the zoo and could never go too many times. Also, this was the first time I got to test out my zoom lens on my new camera! I like the results I got. A lot of the animals weren't out since it was winter, like the kangaroos, but we still got to see all the main animals like the lions, monkeys, elephants, etc. Next week we're also going to try to go to the Grosser Garten. It's a very beautiful huge garden which I've seen part of, but there is a kings palace at the center which I haven't seen yet and a famous gold statue that I also would like to see.

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Comments

[mom]

looks like he's thinking i could have saved ten percent on my car insurance:)

[mom]

glad you like your new camera. your photos are dynamite! loveeee the ones at the zoo.