Mental Note: Stick to rental car companies in the center of the city. Yeah. They don't all speak English in the suburbs.

Ivan and Susan woke up early to go to the EuropCar office to pick up our car. Our first problem was that the guy helping us didn't speak English. Eventually, a woman who spoke English helped us and we learned our second problem was that the car they had for us couldn't be driven to Zurich (it was too many kilometers to put on the car) even though our reservation clearly said we would be dropping it off in Zurich. So, they had to have a car driven to us from another location, which delayed us by over an hour. When the car finally came, it seemed to be an upgraded version and they told us we couldn't take it to Italy, although our reservation specifically said we could go to Italy. We still need to get that sorted out, but we were just too glad to get the car and be on our way that we didn't want to bring it up at the time.

We drove back to the hotel to collect our belongings and Claire, got lunch at the Kebap stand, and drove to Dresden. In Dresden, we stayed at a great hostel. We were able to borrow bikes for free and spent the evening on a bike tour of the city (guided by Rick Steves). We had dinner at a soup restaurant and returned to the hostel for a decent bed time. Unfortunately, although there are many nice things about the hostel, quietness at night is NOT one of them. The hostel backs up to a few bars and the noise throughout the night made for difficult sleeping.

Labels: Europe 2008, Germany