Unusually I had a dreadful night's sleep but it was for no reason that I could fathom.
The breakfast restaurant was extremely busy with thick necked middle aged men. Upon enquiring it seems that the Brno beer festival attracts Hungarian connessuiers (the waiter called them drinkers, but surely that's judgmental 🤔😂)
We left the posh hotel with plenty of time to spare.
I went to the market and bought some apricots for lunch (6 apricots cost about 75p).
It was raining as we walked down the hill to the station, and we parked ourselves in the first class lounge. This was as odd as the last lounge we used.
We knew that the train - coming from Budapest - was delayed, but the delay got longer every time the screen refreshed! When it finally arrived it was about 45 minutes late.
That wasn't the worst of it.
Our reserved seats were in a carriage that didn't exist. I found the conductor who worked out where out seats were - so off we went. Only to find a family sitting in them.
So, back to the conductor - who came back with me and had a blazing argument with the family, but the conductor understandably backed down, and found us some second class seats - in a coach where the air con wasn't working!
At least we had seats. (And the train was now an hour behind time!)
An hour before Prague we decided to have a dining car lunch. A €9 Chicken Salad and a bottle of Sprite each - which was splendid.
The nasty family got off at Prague and we were able to reclaim our first class seats.
In the compartment there were a couple of friendly Germans who had had a very similar experience with double booked seats.
And relax!
We went through the valley of the River Elbe which was beautiful and could rival the Rhine. I tried taking photos through the window at the back of the train but really couldn't capture it properly.
Arriving in Dresden just under an hour later than planned I decided that I was too knackered to do the tram-in-a-strange-city thing and got a taxi.
I'd previously been assured that German taxis are well regulated and the drivers are generally honest.
I don't know if €12.50 was reasonable but I'm glad not to have had to think about anything other than getting into the hotel.
And the hotel room is an apartment - it's huge and we've got a balcony (and we don't need to be risk assessed to use it (family In-joke, sorry)).
There's a rooftop bar, and we've paid an absolute fortune extra to have breakfast each day.
All we need to do now is forage for some food.