Trier

On to Trier (pronounced tree-uh), the oldest city in Germany.  It's hard for us to imagine just how old since an old building in the U.S. is from the 1700s and even the 'ancient' Native American sites are 1000 to 1400 A.D.  Trier was founded in 16 B.C. as a Roman colony by Emperor Caesar Augustus.  There are still remains from those Roman times.

For instance. the piers of this current bridge are from Roman times.

And these remains of Imperial Roman Baths surprised me.

(Both the previous pictures were snapped out of the bus on our way by.  Sigh . . . What can you do?)

They did let us off the bus, though, much to Ron's relief.  We hadn't thought to mention that he gets car sick.  We rectified that on later trips.

The giant bus made its way up the tiny winding road to a lookout where we had a great view of the city.   The aforementioned Roman Baths ruins are in the center of the picture and the green area at the bottom is an amphitheater built over the remains of a Roman arena.

The Basilica of Constantine, originally part of a palace complex, was built in 310 A.D.

And attached to the back wall was this fancy building.

(I know my tour guide abilities are lacking.)

As we saw in every city we toured, there was a lovely city square.

But this one was special because of the city gate.  The Porta Nigra was built in the second century (without mortar) and is the largest existing Roman gate north of the Alps.

After some free time to explore the city on our own, the bus took us to our boat (picture of that later), and soon we were cruising down the Moselle River.

Even though everyone could probably swim to the bank in an emergency, we still had the required drill.  If the chaos of the drill was any indication of what would happen in a crisis, we were in trouble.