Our Trip Begins...

Finally at a hotel with WiFi. We are behind on our posts...

Thursday, June 25, 2015

We start a new European holiday today.

There are two distinct parts to the trip we have planned. We are starting a 5 day self-guided cycling holiday along the Moselle River Cycle path in Germany on Saturday. Then we fly to Ireland for a driving tour.

Today is a transportation day, or more precisely day-night-day. We fly to Frankfurt tonight, then take a train to Koblenz and then on to Trier. We should arrive in Trier on Friday afternoon. Trier is the starting point of our cycling tour. The travel books describe it as an ancient Roman city with some of the most impressive Roman ruins north of the Alps. I hope we will have the energy to have a look around on Friday, but I expect we will be very tired.

I am writing this on the plane en route to Frankfurt. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to post this in Frankfurt while we are waiting for our train.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Our trip to Trier on Friday went mostly OK with a few frustrations. The train ride from the Airport to Trier took almost 4 hours. I think the guy at the train station at the airport sent us on the milk run. Lots of stops and a one 7-minute frantic train change. When we got to Trier, the ‘three’ minute taxi ride to the hotel described in our guide, turned into half an hour due to construction and cost almost as much as our train ride. So by the time we got to the hotel we were very tired and hungry. We pulled ourselves together and found a bus to take us to the city center.

Trier was actually very nice and deserved more time than we had, We only had a few hours to explore before we had to get back to our hotel to sort out some stuff. We found the Porta Nigra which is apparently the best preserved Roman town gate north of the Alps. It was built in 180 AD.

We also saw the beautiful Dom (Cathedral) which, according to the guide books is the oldest Christian church north of the Alps. The original church was built on this site by Constantine in 330 AD. The current building is much new dating from 1035.

We also had time to walk to the ruins of Roman imperial bathes. This site was closed to the public however the ruins were still impressive from the outside.