Trier; Tuesday, 02 August, 2011

I was up early as I wanted to get out to the small town of Cochem before the worst of its onslaught of tourists turned up. The town is located on a very pretty bend in the Mosel, with a picture perfect town centre and a brooding medieval castle perched on a hill overlooking the centre, so naturally it draws tourists by their thousand.

First stop of the morning was the castle, on the hill above the town. It’s only visible on a guided tour and I was early enough to get onto the first tour of the morning.

Having completed the tour I headed back down into town and the caught the chairlift that goes up to the hill on the opposite side of town for stunning views over the town centre, the castle and this particular stretch of the Mosel.

I had about an hour to kill before the train I’d booked onto back to Trier so I had a long wander around the city centre, which was slowly becoming impassable because of the tour groups, so I took that as my queue to head back to the station.

Back in Trier I wandered down to the Porta Nigra and was in time to get the open-top hop-on-hop-off bus for its tour. As it was so hot, and sitting on the open top deck was so refreshing, I did two circuits (as a lot of other people were doing). By the time I finally got back to Porta Nigra the temperature was starting to fall a bit and the air was a bit fresher.

I walked the, very, short distance to the Porta Nigra and had a look round that, then it was time for a spot of dinner, a long wander around the city centre and then bed.