Trier

Last Thursday, Feb. 9, we visited Trier, which is about 2 hours away from Wiesbaden.  It was a cold, dreary day, which was probably not the best weather for tromping around an old city!  Bob and I had been to Trier on our honeymoon, but at that time I was really not remotely interested in Roman history, so I didn't pay that much attention.  Now, after all my years with Latin, I have become much more interested, and this was probably the place I wanted to visit most.  Others were not that interested or excited, however.

When we got to Trier, I was in front, which is never a good thing, and I didn't turn at the place where I had wanted to go to find parking.  So we parked further away, and when we came up out of the garage, I was completely disoriented.  All we had was a tiny map Siri had photocopied from my library copy of Fodor's Guide to Germany, and it didn't have that many street names on it!  We found 2 street names and launched out in the opposite direction.  Unfortunately, we veered too far in one direction, so we ended up way off course, once we found another street name on our map.  Oops!  The younger set was tired and cold--and we hadn't even gotten anywhere yet!  Caleb really shined with his map reading skills, however, and he got us back on track.  Eventually we made it to the Imperial Baths (Kaiserthermen), which I had remembered seeing on our honeymoon.  Now they have a nice visitor's center with a movie.  They were doing construction to preserve the ruins.

We were allowed to walk under the bath ruins.

The tunnels were creepy for the littles, but I thought they were actually neat.  There were "skylights" every so often, so it didn't feel too dark.  There were water passages in here, and this was also where the slaves heated up the water.

It all reminded me of some of Jonathan's mine craft mazes!

A look at the part of the ruins that remain above ground.  It was an enormous complex back in the 300's!

I had wanted to visit the amphitheatre, but alas, it was flooded and ice-covered, so it was closed.  Instead we walked down towards the center of town, towards this pink palace and huge basilika.  I took a picture of Bob in this same place when we were here on our honeymoon 24 1/2 years ago, so it was fun to take a picture here again, with 8 of the kids!

Right after this picture, we stopped at a cafe that was attached to the Landesmuseum, which we did not tour (but seemed like it would have been really interesting, with all sorts of Roman artifacts).  We again got hot chocolate.  They offered both white chocolate (the waiter said it was Swiss white chocolate), and brown, so we got a cup of both.  The consensus was that the white chocolate tasted like warm milk and wasn't very good, but the brown chocolate was pretty good, and we ended up getting 2 more cups of the brown.  Again, not as good as Saalburg, however.  It was a nice break for us though, and everyone warmed up.

This is the south wing of the Electoral Palace, which was finished in 1756.  It is very detailed and beautiful!

The palace was added onto the Basilika of Constantine, which he commissioned as a throne room in the early 300's.  It's being used as a church now.

At this point we were trying to find the parking garage again, since everyone was ready to head back home.  We remembered we had parked by a church, so we headed toward a steeple.  That steeple turned out to be the great Dom of Trier, the Cathedral of St. Peter, the oldest cathedral in Germany.  It was so massive--it's actually 4 basilicas joined in the middle by a baptistry.  It was built on the foundations of a Roman palace, and the church got burned down several times before it was restored around 1000 AD.  Interestingly, it is the resting place of several relics--the skull of Constantine's mother Helena, the soles of St. Andrew's sandal, a nail of the cross, and the "seamless garment" Christ wore while being crucified.  I'm not sure how verified these are, but they are in the treasury, which regretfully we did not see.

Another part of the Dom, built in a completely different style, so it looks like a completely different church.

That part was open, so Jonathan and Bob peeked in.  Bob said it looked like the cathedral in his hometown.  The doors are pretty neat!

We headed in a new direction, and this led us to the main old plaza in Trier.  Again, I remembered seeing this with Bob on our honeymoon!

The buildings are so neat.  The corner one has a McDonalds on the bottom 2 floors.

Another church, another steeple ("Be vigilant and pray" is what it says by the clock, if I remember my Latin correctly), and more cool buildings.

This was a neat archway.

Hey, look, a store just for me all the way over here!  My parents used to be stationed at Spangdahlem, which is not too far away from here before I was born, and my mom said this store was definitely new since then!  Ha!

And lo and behold, we made it to the Porta Nigra, or the Black Gate!  I was so happy!  We didn't go to the other side, because everyone was very much done at this point, but I was glad to see it.  It was built around 170 AD.  It is so unreal to think about how old these things are that are still standing solid and strong!  Amazing!

We were also happy to see "Fleishstrasse", which was a street we recognized from when we got out of our parking garage (if only we had taken it then!).  We walked down it, passing another cool square with this Roman-y statue in it.  And then--hooray!--we were back at the corner where we started our day!

This was actually the church the parking garage was next to.  It seemed plenty big when we were first in Trier, but after seeing the Basilika and the Dom, it seemed quaint and tiny!

We had the long drive home, made longer because once again I failed to read the GPS correctly, and I got off at the exit before the one it actually wanted me to.  (In fairness, they were close together, and it is really hard to look at the GPS and look at the ever-darkening roadway!)  So we had to wander through a cute little town, and then do this pretzel-like maneuver to get back on the road we were supposed to be on.  I was glad it wasn't dark yet!  Bob said it only took 3 minutes to catch up to their car, but it seemed like it took longer to me!  That is the downside of driving 2 vehicles.  The upside is being able to park in parking garages and other small places, lol.  So we made it home with no further incidents, but we were all pretty fried after the long, cold day.  We got frozen pizzas from the store Hit and cooked those, since the C's had headed off to a previously planned ski trip to Garmisch.  Then we collapsed into bed, exhausted!