I was also interested to visit Bastei Bridge, which was located close to Dresden.
The original plan was to rent a car and drive from Berlin to Kromlau and Moskau Park, and then stay the night in Görlitz; the next day, drive to Bastei Bridge before returning the car in Dresden.
However, it cost a lot more to do this over 2 days since extra charges is incurred for returning the car to a different location, and I also wanted to stay in Berlin a little longer to see the Christmas markets.
So I booked a car for 1 day, with a pick up time of 7.30am.
I woke up earlier than expected and decided to try my luck to go in and pick up the car at 6.30am, as I knew it was going to be an exceptionally long day and with an earlier departure, I could possibly get back while there's still some light.
Unfortunately the car was only available at 7am, so I waited around for a while and then went back to collect the keys. But before I could make my trip, I had to figure out how to get out of the car park!
The car I rented was manual - I had no issues driving manual, and the manual cars I had driven were all 5 gears + reverse. The car I got had 6 gears + reverse. No matter how hard I tried to push the gear far left and up, I keep getting 1st gear and couldn't engage reverse.
I was so close to hitting a wall by this time as I kept nudging forward with each attempt of putting the car in reverse. Not wanting to crash the car even before I started my trip, I got out of the car and look for help.
Thankfully there were a couple of guys chatting on the side of a mini van and I asked them if they could help me figure out what I was doing wrong in getting the car to reverse.
Turns out, to engage reverse, I needed to lift a knob (located just below the handle), while pushing it left and up. Finally! Why on earth did someone decide its a good idea to add an additional gear to the box?!? In my opinion, it was more work, and I much prefer a 5 gear box.
So off I went on my way!
First stop Rakotzbrücke, located in Kromlau, which was about 2hrs drive from Berlin. Traffic was heavy within the city that morning, and somewhat annoying as I was still getting used to the 6 gear manual driving, but once I got on the highway, I was happy.
I was somewhat concerned the view would not be great at Rakotzbrücke, because it was gloomy and slightly drizzly, and I read there needs to be sufficient light for the reflection to work.
Also, I read some people mentioned the lake was dried up at one point.
I was very pleasantly surprised... Those autumn colours around the lake, together with the reflections in the water was just amazing!
In fact, the overcast weather probably helped intensified the colours when I took the photos, and gave it a mysterious effect. I was so glad the drizzle briefly stopped while I was there, and there was no major wind either. Because of the weather, it was probably also the reason why there was no one else around except for me.
The area around the lake was super artificial though, definitely looks better in pictures than to venture around the area in person. It's easy to also walk around the lake within 10 minutes.
I quickly hopped back into the car and made my way to the next stop - Muskau Park.
I wasn't sure where I could park and randomly parked at this spot just near a church.
Muskau Park is the largest and one of the most famous English gardens in Central Europe, stretching along both sides of the German–Polish border on the Lusatian Neisse.
Following Google maps, I walked towards the park and shortly came upon Schloss Muskau - huge and extremely impressive.
I didn't have time to visit the interiors nor the chance to pop over the Polish side since there's still quite a fair bit of travelling left in the day.
I figured I would be popping into Poland while in Görlitz, so after taking a few photos, I quickly make my way back to the car.
The drive to Görlitz is about 1 hr from Muskau. I had originally mapped a couple of parking spots in the town, and made my way to one of the spots. The parking machine only accepted coins for payment, but I had no coins on me at that time. I decided to take a chance and visit the town as quickly as I could.
My gosh, this is such a pretty town, and I so wished I had done this as a 2 day trip, and spend one night in this town. I would had loved to explore the town better.
This town was used as a filming site for a number of movies including "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Inglorious Bastards".
I particularly like this building, I thought it looked really cute, like as if it has 3 eyes looking at you.
Quite a few shops and restaurants seemed closed in the town.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a German border town with Poland. Crossing this bridge and I will be on the Polish town of Zgorzelec.
And of course I crossed! The first sight is of a number of colourful buildings.
My original plan was to settle down at a place for lunch on the Polish side, but because of the parking issue, and after calculating the amount of time I have left to get to the next spot, I had to quickly make my way, and grab a snack on the go instead.
Bastei Bridge is another 2hrs drive from Görlitz. I got to the city of Rathen at about 3.15pm, just enough time with sufficient light to get to the bridge and back.
Rathen was another town I would had loved to spend more time at. I did notice that quite a few places were closed, and I suspect it's because its low season this time of year.
It took me approximately 30 mins to get to the viewpoints of Bastei. Bastei is the most famous rock formation in Saxon Switzerland, Germany. Bastei and the Bastei Bridge are the highlights of the german Saxon Switzerland National Park area.
It was very impressive, and it could do with a little more light, but I was thankful I got to see the magnificence of this place before night fell.
By the time I got back down and to the car, it was already completely dark. I was originally hoping that I could get some light on my drive back.
Since it wasn't the case, I decided to look for a restaurant nearby and have a nice early dinner before driving back. This brought me very close to Dresden and I settled into "Restaurant Gunsel's" which had good reviews and decent pricing (as per Google maps), and ordered a Schnitzel.
The drive today had brought me across a lot of rolling hills, open pastures, beautiful countryside views. However when night had fallen, everything becomes pitched dark, since most places does not have any street lamps. Even on the highways there weren't much street lights, and I highly relied on the red lights of the cars to determine their positions.
Driving on the highway had been rather interesting, as there were speed marks of 80, 120,130kph. But there were also sections, which had no speed marks (according to the car's GPS system), and I saw a number of cars going at a very high speed and take it that no speed limits apply to those sections. The fastest I went was probably 190kph, and in the dark! It actually kept me awake more than while I was driving slow.
I just wasn't sure if I may had been caught on a speed camera as I saw a big red flash at one point, on a stretch of road that was undergoing road works with a marked speed of 80kph, and I might had been going at about 105kph.
Just crossing my fingers I get no speed ticket charges passed on by the rental car company.
By the time I got back to my hotel room, it was already about 10pm. Having started off really early this morning, and having a late night yesterday and a packed week in Berlin, I was completely exhausted!
Time to sleep in tomorrow and maybe chill over the weekend.
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