Post Two - Trier

After leaving Frankfurt Airport, we head onto a small yellow bus (not a school bus) to Trier.  We passed many medium industrial areas, orchards, and wineries on our way to Trier.  Finally we get to Trier and our rooms are not ready at the PentaHotel.  So we piled our luggage into a room and head to lunch.  We go to an Italian restaurant on a street with outdoor seating.  I ordered pizza.  It was a substantial sized pizza and others ordered pizza.  They were substantial sized as well!

We get back to the hotel where some of the rooms where ready.  They were being prepared in alphabetical order.  Of course, mine would be last.  We waited until three o'clock by laying down on the couches of the lobby resting off our jet lag.  At 3, we met up with a tour guide who explained the sites (I may have misunderstood some of the details). We headed to the center part of town and finally down to the Petra Nigra.  This was a gate of the Roman times that surrounded the city almost 2,000 years ago.  This structure made it known that Trier is the oldest city in Germany and it had up to 80,000 people in an ancient times.  Diocletian separated the Roman Empire and Trier was the capital before moving to Constantinople.  We toured several other structures including the market square that was built as a result of the clash with merchants and the Bishop.  The Bishop built the square and merchants retaliated with building a church of their own.  We then toured the Dom, the Cathedral.  We headed down further and went to a large building that Emperor Constatnine had held royal court.  This building had been converted in recent years to a Protestant church.

I had no idea about Trier and it's history in Roman times.  I just assumed that most of the history of the time was in south around the Mediterranean.

I returned to the room at 5:00 and slept until 8:30 and went back out until 10:00 pm to take photos a in the city.  Ireally needed the sleep and it doesn't get dark until after 10 pm!

Italian restaurant where we ate dinner on Sunday

Karl Marx had lived here as a child

Petra Nigra