We decided to take the dogs with us this time, so on Friday I packed everything up during the day. I had the day off, but Shanna had to work, so when she got off work the dogs & I picked her up and hit the road. On the way we hit traffic jam after traffic jam, followed by a torrential downpour of rain and hail. What should have been a 3 hour drive ended up being 5 1/2 hours. We eventually pulled into Trier, though, and got to our hotel. The reviews I'd read said it was an unusual hotel, but that people liked it. I couldn't agree more. The "theme" seemed to be 70's, but you could tell it'd been remodeled recently. And our room was HUGE. Well, huge by European standards, big by American standards. It had a bedroom, an "office" area, and the bathroom in between. Essentially, three rooms. Even though it was newly renovated, I still laughed at the 70's colors.
After getting settled, we ordered room service for dinner and called it a night. The next morning we woke up early and got ready. The cathedral didn't start admitting people until 10:30am, and we were ready to walk out the hotel at 9, so we decided to take the dogs with us to explore the town. I'd picked this hotel because of it's proximity to the the Altstadt (old town) area, so it was a quick walk into the heart of old town. It didn't take long for Shanna to find a new store she loved...if it was located in Stuttgart, I can only imagine how many Euros they'd get from us.
We were casually walking through town, but we had a destination...the tourist information center. Most trips we have time to look up things to see, but we'd both been so busy with work that we really hadn't had time. I'd talked with co-workers who mentioned the Black Gate, but that & the tunic were the only things I knew to visit. We eventually got to the Tourist Information center, and signed up for the 1:30pm walking tour. The info center was located right at the Black Gate. The Black Gate was the original entrance to the city during Roman times, and the only surviving entrance today. Originally built in approximately 180 A.D., it's an impressive structure. Since we had the dogs with us, only one of us could go up inside the gate. Since Shanna didn't really have an interest, I went in.
The gate was multiple levels. I was disappointed that there wasn't much in the way of documentation, but it ended up being not a big deal because our tour guide later that day was so knowledgable. But I'll get to that later. As I walked through, it was incredible to think people had been doing what I was doing for 2,000 years in this very structure. As I walked up to the first level, I heard what sounded like shouting in German. My first assumption was it was just kids goofing around. Then I turned the corner and saw a Roman guard! Of course, it was just an actor. Apparently, one of the tour options is a guy dressed as a Roman guard who shouts at you on a tour.
The view from the top was amazing...you could see the entire old town area, plus the surrounding hills. When you look at the page of pictures that I'll link to at the end, I included a movie I took that is a panoramic view of the city. At one point I was looking out over the city when my phone rang. It was Shanna telling me to come around to the other side. When I did, I saw her sitting out front with both dogs next to her. I called out Murphy's name and laughed as he looked around, trying to find me.
I eventually came down and we took the dogs back to the hotel. They were tired, so it didn't take long for them to go to sleep. We left them in the room, and headed to the cathedral. The line was LONG when we got there, but it didn't take nearly as long as I thought to get through. From the time we got in line to the time we were walking out of the church was only 1 hour. When we got in line, I noticed these tall colored sticks everywhere. Shanna had read that they were pilgrimage sticks. As we got closer to them in line, we noticed most of them had strings of yarn wrapped around them. I don't know where they came from, but close to the entrance was a guy using the string to weave blankets. It was neat seeing him do it using no machinery...it was entirely using manual methods. He was using a crude version of the machine that the lady in Istanbul used to weave the Turkish rugs.
At one point in line a priest (or maybe he was a cardinal or bishop) walked through followed by altar boys. There was a person carrying a portable speaker behind him that was playing music. As it played, the people in the crowd sang. It was all in German, but really neat to watch. In the pictures section, I have a video posted there of them walking into the cathedral.
Finally we got inside. Unfortunately they'd made it pretty clear that no pictures were to be taken. They had people standing all around ready to kick you out if you took a pic, so I didn't risk it. The tunic itself definitely looked old...I don't know if it looked 2,000 years old, but it definitely looked ancient. It was in a sealed off, climate controlled glass case, but you could get right up on it and look at it.
After we walked outside, we had about an hour before our tour started. We grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the tourist information center to start our tour.
The guide we had was great...he was VERY knowledgable, and captured our interest from the start. He first took us to the Black Gate and explained everything about it. From 180 A.D. to 1,000 A.D., it was the entrance gate to the city. From 1,000 A.D. to 1800 A.D., there was a church built around it. In 1800 the Church was torn down, and from then until now, it's been a gate again. We'd walked through the gate earlier, but hearing all kinds of information explained about it was fascinating. He showed us parts of the Church that still remained, as well as a stone that'd been exposed over the years with a number carved in it. That number was how the company who supplied the stones from the local quarry charged the Roman government. We'd walked right past it earlier and hadn't noticed it. One other interesting fact he mentioned about Trier was during it's prime, the city was the second largest Roman city next to Rome itself.
From there we walked a short distance to the house that Karl Marx grew up in. Regardless of your political beliefs, and whether you support Socialism or not, it was still neat to see buildings associated with such a key historical figure.
From there we visited the Three Kings house, which was built during Roman times and recently restored. We meandered from there to the market square, which had been a continuously running market since 958 A.D., then on to a large sundial monument. Trier has many cigarette companies, and they paid for this sundial. The running joke locally is that the center of the dial bears a strong resemblance to a cigarette.
From there we headed to what used to be the Emperor's reception hall. If you look closely at the pic below, you can see some plaster. The "style" during Roman times was for no bricks to be displayed, they plastered over everything. In the picture below, you can still see the last remnants of the plaster that used to coat the building.
Once inside, our guide told us all about history of the reception hall. After the Romans had left, and the Catholic Church had taken it over, one of the local Bishops wanted to tear the place down. He started, but only got part way through. Eventually it was restored, but to give a visual, our guide showed us a picture of what the inside used to look like.
At that point our tour was over. Shanna & I walked through the gardens, then headed to the ruins of the Roman Baths. We were going to walk through them originally, but we found a vantage point to look inside and realized there wasn't much left. Since that was the case, we decided not to head inside. Instead we took a short walk from there to the Amphitheater. It was here that the Romans used to hold Gladiator fights, both between men and animals. While walking through we got to walk under the Amphitheater where the Gladiators would prepare for battle, as well as in the rooms on the main levels where they'd keep the Lions that the Gladiators would fight. The picture below is taken from within the Lion's den, looking out to the center of the ring.
In it's prime, the Amphitheater could hold 100,000 people. It obviously used to be much larger, there's no way you could fit that many people now. Once we finished walking around, it was time to head back to the hotel room for the dogs. We put their leashes on and headed back out. Our first stop was the Karl Marx birth house. I didn't care about going inside, but I wanted a picture of the house. After that, we headed to the Roman Bridge. Rumor has it the Romans built the bridge over the Mosel River into the city. That's a debated fact today, but it was still nice walking out to the bridge and taking a picture.
From there we wandered around looking for a place to eat dinner. We eventually found a small place that had some of the best Italian food. I had lasagne and Shanna had a ravioli dish. We started with a plate of Buffalo Mozzarella that was DELICIOUS. It was coated in Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar.
I also got to sample some local beer that was amazing. After dinner we were beat, so we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
The next morning we packed up, and while we'd seen all of Trier that we wanted to, we wanted to stop somewhere on the way home and sight see some more. Shanna pulled out the map on the iPad and found Bingen. It's a major city located on the Rhein river, and they have daily cruises from there along the Rhein. It was an hour drive from Trier to Bingen, and when we got there, we bought our roundtrip tickets for the cruise, and headed out to the docks. While it was cold, it was also clear & sunny, so a beautiful day for a Rhein river cruise. We had lunch on the boat and sampled a great bottle of local wine.
The whole ride the dogs just sat under the table snoring. We slowly cruised down the Rhein, looking at all the towns and castles along the way. The boat stopped at it's final destination in St. Goar. I'd never heard of the town, but as soon as we stepped off the boat it was obvious this was a town made for tourists. It was nice walking down the old town street and going through all the shops. We picked up a few bottles of local wine, and I got a new stein. This one was unique because it was made from black crystal...the more I look at it, the more I'm glad I paid the extra money for it.
Eventually we headed back to the dock, and took the cruise back to Bingen. From there we hit the road, and headed home.
Overall this was a great trip. It was nice to get away with Shanna & the dogs, and just relax and view Germany. Almost all of our trips involve a country outside of Germany, so it was nice for a change to stay in a country where we were comfortable with the local language and could easily drive to wherever we wanted.
As I stated in a previous post, we have a lot going on between now and Mid-July. Our next trip is next weekend, Memorial Day weekend, to Normandy, France, to view the beaches of D-Day and various memorials related to it. Normandy is somewhere I've wanted to visit for years, so I can't wait for this trip. Check back after next weekend for a full report!
In the mean time, click here or any pictures above to see the see the pictures from this past weekend.
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