After two days of dark clouds and occasional rain, the sun came out while we were on our way to Dresden, certainly a welcome sight that rekindled hope for a nice Christmas Day. The stark difference was literally night and day, the clouds started thinning and suddenly cleared out as we drove headlong into the strong sunshine. Frankly I slept a good part of the way for both practical and psychological reasons. I was still quite sleepy it was hard to not close my eyes and doze off. I was also becoming increasingly nervous at how fast we were driving in our small Fiat 500 I couldn’t stand to look at the road in front of us. Arriving into Dresden in a sleepy state and thankfully in one piece, I was pleasantly taken aback by how nice it was. It was like Edinburgh and Prague got married, had a child and named it Dresden. And not only that, even more surprising was how they went all out with their Christmas market – it put the ones in Berlin to shame and could very well be the best I’ve seen anywhere by far. Each and every stall in the main market was trying to out-do each other with animatronic reindeers, roofs and walls covered in pine branches, vendors in costume, and all wares completely about Christmas, as it should be. Under a clear blue sky on this cold, late December day I got to enjoy an ideal, traditional German Christmas market that I’d been longing for all these years.