Breakfast. Carmen skipped her egg in favour of a rye bun. Morning is slow and it’s our last day. We decide to clean up Trier rather than rushing around out of town.

Outside the hotel was a cool, sporty little (emphasis on little) twoseater. A couple if turns around it before I realized it was a Smart Car. They don’t offer this model in Canada!

A stroll across town gets us train tickets to Mainz tomorrow at 9:09. There’s a cathedral and Gutenburg museum there and we will then hop onto Frankfurt Airport to the Garden Hilton where we have rooms awaiting us.

After leaving the bahnhof we headed north out of the city centre. The St Paulins church is nestled in what is actually a lovely cemetery. It’s a baroque church and if you’ve ever wondered what baroque was, thus church was an awesome example. Built 1734-1751 it was designed by Balthasar Neumann; soaring white walls, frescoed ceiling, heavily ornate and gilt altar and choir; it was visually stunning. I’m not a fan of the baroque as I think it goes too far but you can’t deny it’s place in the scales of magnificence.

On blogging: it’s quiet here although a few tourists and churchgoers have come and gone. I’m not sure if I should be staring at the ceiling being inspired or staring at my phone jotting down the inspirations. It’s like the photographers dilemma: do you look a the subject and see the moment or do you capture the moment for the future. One is more powerful yet ephemeral, the other is a reduction of the moment but will live on in many other moments.

Anyway, I sometimes spend a lot of time writing to remember and less time appreciating.

After we didn’t fix what was obviously baroque, we sauntered back to old town. I stopped at the tourist booth looking for an old map or poster. I’ve seen some lovely ones framed here and there. No luck. Next we checked the museum gift shop and I found a small one for 2 euro. Not exactly what I wanted buy it was only 2 euro: deal.

Lunch was two .5L of Reisling and curryworst for the girls. I stuck with a good old fashioned hamburger and fries. They don’t have ketchup in Germany; I thinks it’s a Protestant thing. I did however have thousand island dressing in my burger, so that close… right? After winning and crushing Carmen in an argument about why it’s good to judge people who smoke in a graceless manner we adjourned to better territory.

We figured a quick tour around the Dom Museum and then home for a nap. The Museum was a bit of a negative experience. It wasn’t included in the pass I had so we shelled out the 3.50 euro each (more than the train ticket to Saarburg) but it had no English whatsoever, a bit heavily oriented on the Rock (Jesus’ shirt) and the history of celebrating the shirt and had the most creepy and suspicious museum ‘monitors’ ever. Carmen swears the guy with the limp and squeaky shoes did it on purpose. When we were on his floor he wouldn’t let you out if his sight for more than 3 seconds before you would hear “klomp-squeee, klomp-squeee…” as he glanced around whatever you had moved behind. You would glance up and he would be peering through the railing or up between the statue’s legs. it really was unnerving and made you feel like invaders. Maybe they sensed we had let our catholic cards lapse (or, in the case of Leslie, were catholic deniers) and felt that was just the tip of the iceberg and were likely to let loose with the spray paint at any moment.

Still it had some lovely old MS, a few scale models and some beautiful Madonna & child figures. I got a great pic of a chubby old bishop praying. Of the statue that is…

By his time Carmen and I were tired, hot and whiney so we made Leslie take us home. Outside the hotel I picked up a luke warm Cherry Coke that didn’t taste cherry and really didn’t taste like Coke. Sometimes I don’t know what these Germans are thinking.

In case you are wondering about tan updates, Carmen has indeed attained the exhalted Cinnamon Toast level of achievement. My left foot is the winner with chocolate pudding and Leslie is an even golden waffle; might even be Belgian waffle but there are politics involved so…

We strolled into town; we are schnitzled out so we went for pizza and a Malzbier (Leslie had bitter lime. I had a taste and it reminds me of that bizarre concoction my father used to drink so as to discourage us kids from drinking his booze). Now Malzbier is apparently a very malty dark beer. If you hold your nose it tastes like a liquidy molasses. If you inhale before you drink it’s like sniffing yeasty dough … at its very best its like drinking cold flat coke. We only had one.

It should be noted that pizza here is cheap. A thincrust Grosse is only 7.50 euro; that’s only .50€ more than the Klein (small) which is too much for the girls… Maybe 12 inches. And the variations are pretty endless. Anyway
I had a Diavola which burned and burned and burned. I think the peppers must have been grown somewhere down in Dante’s inferno.

After dinner we stopped off at Das
Weingut for a nightcap and our last taste of Mosel. We are off to
Mainz first thing in the a.m.

Trier has been wonderful and I’d love to come back some day.