We used the time before meeting our group to see the Landesmuseum. It really opened our eyes to Trier's Celtic, Roman, Frankish, and Christian history! It's collection of Roman artifacts including mosaics, is especially good. Who knew it was such an important Roman town?!
Tour Day 1: Roman Trier and Our Tour!
We had our delicious breakfast and bid Ute farewell after thanking her for such a wonderful stay. With our one carry on size piece of luggage each we rumbled the 5 minutes to the train platforms and waited for our 8:21 am train to Trier via Koblenz. Normally changing trains in Koblenz is all we would have had to do, but they were doing maintenance on the track so we also had to take a bus around the section being worked on. No big deal, it worked just fine. We arrived in Trier about 11:30 am and grabbed a cab outside the Hauptbahnhof to take us to our hotel, Hotel Residenz am Zuckerberg at Frauenstrasse 7. Just as our directions from Rick Steves' said it cost us about 10 Euros and was worth it vs. walking for the time savings. Our rooms were not yet ready when we arrived, so we left our luggage in storage and headed out for the afternoon.
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Rheinisches Landesmuseum
Trier's Archaeological Museum has the best collection of Roman art in Germany, and we were ready to explore it! Using the map provided by the hotel we made our way to the museum and spent the afternoon before meeting up with our tour in happy contemplation of all things Roman, plus some things from the Celtic and Frankish periods. Most of the item descriptions are solely in German so make sure to grab the very good English audio guide on your way in to get the most out of your visit.
Meeting Our Guide and Group!
Taking our group picture outside of our hotel in Murren, Switzerland.
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We met our group in a conference room at the hotel. We started to chat among ourselves while people trickled in. Luckily, everyone's travel plans worked out and we all made it on time. Andrea had everyone introduce themselves to the group, and she went through both the expectations for us as tour participants and ours of her as our leader. She also handed out our headsets for easy listening on group walking tours that we would keep for the duration of our tour. She then had us pair up with someone we had not come on the tour with as our buddies for easy head counts. Brian from CO was sitting next to me so we became tour buddies!
Andrea (green jacket front and center) - She speaks German, English, and Italian (wow!). Before becoming a RS guide she worked on a Water Buffalo Farm in southern Italy giving tours. How cool is that?! |
Trier Orientation Walk and Our First Group Dinner
On our way to our first group dinner Andrea showed us a shortcut to the main square and pointed out where we could get money if we needed to. Our first group activity wasn't actually dinner, but seeing the inside of the Porta Nigra, the only Roman gate left in Trier. The Romans really were amazing architects and engineers! They would have had to have been to build this huge structure that is amazingly still standing, largely because it was later the home of a hermit and used as a church. Then, we headed to our first group dinner at Zum Domstein on the main square.
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