Trier Trip

On Saturday on the spur of the moment we decided to go to Trier. As anyone with children knows this is never a good idea, but we did it anyway! Trier is the oldest city in Germany and is on the Moselle River. There is so much to see and do the city. We only ended up going to one section of the city. Since we had poorly planned, we did not have a stroller. I also did not have my SLR camera with me. The pictures are not as good as I would have liked. We did enjoy what we were able to see and look forward to going back.

We spent a great deal of time driving around trying to find the visitors center. Since this was a spur of the moment thing we did not really know where we were going. The GPS is not much help in that case. We drove passed the place a number of times before we realized what it was. Once we figured it out, we found a place a to park and took off walking.

We went to the Porta Nigra area. The Porta Nigra is Latin for black gates. The Porta Nigra was built during Roman times and was part of system of four gates that lead into the city. This is the only gate still standing. The area is now a walking square with shops and food venders. We did not know this at the time but the Altstadtfest (Old City Festival) was going on. There was a big stage with live music setup at the base of Porta Nigra. It was pretty neat to see everything that was going on. I would like to go back when there is not a festival to get more pictures.

The back of Porta Nigra where the stage was setup.

Cravings of Saints on the second floor.

A view from the side area.

Pictures from various places in the Porta.

We saw the Porta a number of times from the road. Jackson was dying to climb up the stairs. Once we got into the Porta he wanted to go right to the top.

Ella wanted to be like the boys a climb up the stairs by herself. I know people always say that boys are dangerous crazy ones, but they have not meet Ella!

We had lunch in the square. Our first chance to try German food and we all got hot dogs. One interesting thing I noticed was all the drinks where put in actual glasses. You put a deposit on the glasses and when you return them you get the deposit back. We also enjoyed ice cream and pretzels as we walked.

As we were walking around a found a beautiful old church in the square. It was the St. Gangolf church. The church was built in 14th and 15th century. It is a beautiful active catholic church. Ryan and I went inside the church while Mark stayed out with the little ones. I took a few pictures, but would have loved to taken more. I am not happy with the way the ones I took turned out. Once again I needed my SLR camera.

The entrance to St. Gangolf.

Pictures from the courtyard of the church.

A few pictures from the inside of the church. There was so much more I would have loved to take pictures of. I was worried I would offend the people there.

Overall it was a pretty good trip for being unplanned!