GERMANY - To The Bastei

Today I find myself taking a day trip out from Beijing and heading up to the Great Wall ........ Well actually I'm heading south from Dresden, to the Saxon Switzerland National Park and its most famous and popular viewpoint the Bastei Bridge. But such is the volume of tourists, particularly Chinese ones, that I might as well be off to see the Great Wall.

To be fair, the Bastei Bridge was built solely as a tourist attraction to enable people to visit the sandstone rocks and admire the view of the Elbe valley. Also my guide book does say "Don't visit at weekends and plan to arrive before the coaches start arriving at 10am" So at 10:15 on the Sunday morning of a Bank Holiday Weekend I was hardly likely to have the place to myself was I? But the rain has gone and the sun is out.

I caught the train to Stadt Wehlen and then once again had to get a ferry across the River Elbe to Stadt Wehlen itself, which has typically Germanic architecture.

The walk up to the top of the cliffs here is longer but less steep than going from Kurort-Rathen, the next station down the line. Apart from myself I saw four other people on the trail up, but at the top there is a road so the coaches and cars arrived. But as with everywhere, the further from the car park you go the less the crowds.

The Bastei is a rock formation high up over looking the River Elbe and the Bastei Bridge was built across these rocks allowing 19th century tourists a chance to admire the views, which is what folk have been doing ever since. After wandering around, admiring the view, taking some photos and eating a wurst in a bun followed by an ice cream, I took the steeper and busier path down to Kurort-Rathen. Another ferry took be back across the river where I had another stroll, this time along the river to the next station down the line - Königstein - for my train back to Dresden.

I got an Inter City Express this evening to Frankfurt, a start to my journey home. Tomorrow morning, however, I have some time to have a quick look at what Frankfurt has to offer.