“Wait. You went to Switzerland? In Germany?”

Yes. And no. Let me explain.

Saxon Switzerland is a national park around the Elbe river valley south-east of Dresden, Germany. In 1766 two Swiss artists were appointed to the Dresden Academy of Arts, and in their letters back home they described their new place of residence as very much similar to the landscape back home. They wrote about it so much, referring to the hills around them as Saxon Switzerland, that the name stuck. And thus no, I did not go to Switzerland, but apparently, we visited a national park that to some is very much reminiscent of the Swiss Jura.

Perhaps the biggest tourist attraction in the park is the Bastei bridge. On a good day, with some luck and loads of photography skill, I’m sure you could snap photos like the one below:

 

I, however, only managed this:

I’m pretty happy I got that at all. On a beautiful summer weekend day, the foot traffic around the Bastei bridge is pretty incredible. And walking up the steep stone stairs with loads of people and a labrador in tow wasn’t exactly ideal. So we did a quick pass through, got from one side to the other, and only spent a few minutes admiring the sights while concentrating most of our day on walking about the park itself.

The Saxon Switzerland can be walked about from both the German and the Czech side, and there are parts of the Polish Table Mountains that look very much alike, too. Very green, very moist, with loads of sleek rocks and steep ups and downs. It was a fun day in the wilderness.