The Magical Adventures of Jennifer and Steve: Trier - The Oldest City in Germany/Best Day Ever

I am prefacing this blog post with the comment that this has been our favourite day on the cruise to date. We went 'exploring' on our own, like we normally travel and then finished it off with a lazy cruising afternoon and an awesome dinner. It doesn't get much better than this!

We stayed in port overnight and had an early morning start. Today was the city of Trier, the oldest city in Germany. It dates back to 17 BC. It used to be an old Roman fort, complete with a walled city. We boarded the bus (like lambs…) and went above the city to Mt. Peter to get some good views looking down on the city. We passed by the old Roman amphitheater on the way up. Jennifer and I would have liked to visit it, but it was not on the itinerary. After the views from up high, we boarded the bus again to head down to the city. We passed by the Imperial Thermal baths of Emperor Constantine, and a really huge building whose only purpose was to store the emperor’s throne. We got off the bus at the Porto Nigra, the highlight of the city. It is the oldest part of the wall around the city that is left. It was actually the gate (porto) to the city. As soon as we got off the bus, we left the group, as we wanted to see some other stuff.

We walked up through the pedestrian part of town back to the Imperial baths. Along the way, we passed by an old palace and a beautiful garden. Outside a museum that we passed was the right foot of a statue of Emperor Constantine. The foot to above the ankle was about 1.5 m high. The whole stature would have been pretty big. We got to the imperial baths and saw the other foot on display outside the entrance. Our tour guide had previously explained the bathing process. It started out with getting naked, ‘constitutional’, then sauna, followed by massage, hot bath, tepid bath and cold bath. The baths were supplied water through two aqueducts. The baths were fascinating to see, as we could go into the areas and under ground. We came back up to the surface and had a great view of the remaining wall. It was nice to be able to get up close and personal for a change, instead of seeing it from a viewing point with a tour guide.

We walked back through the pedestrian zone part of town and grabbed a quick bretzl. We walked to the Porto Nigra, snapped some pictures and headed back to town. We decided to skip the bus ride and walk back to the ship, as we haven’t done any good walking since the cruise started. We knew the general direction of the ship, and would eventually hit the river. However, when we got to the river, we had overshot the boat and ended up downstream. We followed the river back until we got back to the boat. In total, it was probably about 6 or 7 km we walked that day. It was sunny and hot, and we beat the buses back, so we grabbed a beer and went up top to play some shuffleboard. I beat Jennifer 2 games to 0.

We cast off around 2:00 pm to head back downstream to meet up at the Rhine River. We will be docking in Bernkastel tonight around 9:00pm (~65 km). Some things we did while up on the sun deck: drink wine, drink beer, sleep, read, play Fluxx, eat chocolate. We saw a professional water ski team practice while we were waiting to go through a lock. After we got out of the lock, about 8 Canadians (including Jennifer and I) sat in chairs along one side of the deck and did the wave as we passed by people on the shore. We got some great reactions.

Tonight was a special epicurean dinner. It started out with cocktails and then we had the dinner. They broke out the good wine for tonight. We started out with a glass of sparking Riesling before dinner. The amuse bouche was a blue cheese mousse. We had a Moselle trout with horseradish crème fraiche on a potato crepe. The next course was a beef broth with cabbage, potatoes, carrots and diced meat. Both of these were served with a Riesling wine. We had our choice of main, and we both chose the grilled veal fillet mignon with porcini sauce and sauerkraut mashed potatoes. This was served with a red wine. Dessert was vineyard peaches with pistachio ice cream and spatlese sabayon. It was served with a dessert wine, a Riesling auslese, aka late harvest Riesling. We both agreed it was the best dinner to date. We sat with a great couple from Australia, Brian and Anne, and two retired teachers from Oregon, Anita and Mary Lou. We’ve dined with both of them before. Brian and Anne are really nice. They are on a 7.5 week trip that has taken them to Hawaii, New York, London and a week in Switzerland. After the cruise, they leave to go to South Africa before heading back to Australia. They joke that they are spending their kids inheritance. ‘Good on them’.