New Palace, Potsdam

We started by visiting Bremen and Celle, both medieval towns, staying on the respective stellplatz before moving to Potsdam where we stayed at Campingpark Sanssouci. A shuttle bus to the local tram stop, with a 20 minute service into town and connections to Berlin. There are several palaces in Sanssouci Park, Sanssouci Palace, which is more impressive from the outside, New Residence and New Palace are both stunning internally.
      Elsewhere in town is the Marmopalais (Marble Palace), impressive externally: Cecilienhof, built to resemble a Tudor mansion and famous for the Potsdam Conference at the end of WW11; and Orangerie Place. The town also has a Dutch Quarter, the bridge where cold war spies were exchanged, various churches and its own Brandenburg Gate. We spent two days visiting Berlin, using the hop on/off buses to visit the cathedral, Charlottenburg Palace which took around 2.5 hours to walk round with some amazing rooms and the Pergammon Museum which contains the Ishtar Gate. We were a bit disappointed with Unter den Linden, it was very hot but the lime trees looked new, only about 15 feet high and gave no shade and a new underground route was being excavated down the centre. Still it gave a nice view of the famous Brandenburg Gate.
      The tour took us to Spreewald, a traffic free area of waterways, then to the Polish border. Here we visited Fusrst Puckler Park. Puckler appears to have been a diarist, traveller, adventurer, womaniser and landscape designer, to name a few. The exhibition is a bit quirky but with sufficient in English.
      We travelled south, still near the border to Bad Schandau, a popular town for the river cruises. We used the train for a day trip to Prague. The town also has a famous old tramway up a gorge to a waterfall. We missed the tram but realised the road was being used by buses so drove up. The only thing to watch was that the tram rails were in the middle of the right hand side of the road, so if you met a tram you had to swing over to the left, but the oncoming traffic seemed to expect this.
      The historic centre of Dresden has been rebuilt and is worth visiting. We used the hop on/off buses to visit the palaces on the escarpment above the river. We had a tour of the Meissen factory though even the prices in the 'seconds' shop were still eyewatering, before visiting Colditz where the guide had a very Yorkshire accent.
      We visited Wartburg Castle perched on a rock above Eisenach before stopping at the riverside stellplatz in Magdeburg. Our next stop, Schwerin, has a truly magnificent castle on an island in the centre of town. Apparently it gave Ludwig some of his ideas for Neuschwanstein. Bremerhaven was a surprise. The stellplatz is right in the harbour area. There is a ship museum containing a medieval merchant ship discovered in the mud and a variety of more modern ships, including a u-boat. The climate museum takes you on a journey round the world; and each area has the flora and climate of the particular area. Back in hot Sardinia, hot and dark in the rain forest and real ice in Antartica.