What I found most delicious, and most Dresden, was the hotel's celebrated cake selection, a rotating cast of extraordinary tortes, slices, and confections that demanded daily investigation. Dresden has a deep and serious relationship with the art of the Konditorei, and the Gewandhaus honors that tradition magnificently. One does not simply have coffee here; one has an occasion. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend the hotel without also recommending that you arrive with a sweet tooth and leave with plans to return.
To travel Germany's great triangle is to understand that a country, like a person, cannot be known through a single encounter. It must be circled, approached from different angles, and considered in different lights. And for those of us lucky enough to carry even a thread of German heritage within us, these three cities offer something beyond the pleasures of travel, they offer the ineffable satisfaction of coming, in some small and luminous way, home.