We farewelled our beloved Schloss this morning, and it was only as we made our way to the main Frankfurt train station, the four of us squished into a Toyota Prius, listening to Simon’s phone ding with notifications from Deutsche Bahn to say our train was delayed, that we figured an Uber door to door the 192 km to our accommodation in Trier would have actually saved us time and money.
But never mind. As the Stoics say, making yourself do uncomfortable stuff stops you taking things for granted.
Today these awkward activities included – chasing an unsavory person out of our reserved first class cabin; watching in amazement as time for our connection in Koblenz dwindled from 17 minutes down into the negative figures; getting ourselves and all our luggage on and off trains amongst thronging crowds before the whistle blew and the doors closed; carrying said luggage up and down station stairways poorly designed for the job; trying and failing to negotiate a taxi trip that wasn’t long enough to be of interest to the driver; and finally, catching a suburban bus crowded with disapproving locals.
By the time we got to our hotel in Trier there was very little appetite for investigating any of the UNESCO world heritage sites, and only hunger for food, since we’d missed lunch on our adventures. We were directed by hotel staff to a very popular local spot, the potato box. It sounds like some sort of awful fast food place, but it was actually very nice. The theme was all the different ways you can serve potatoes. I had a couple of giant gnocchi stuffed with spinach in a cheese sauce. Delicious.
Our bikes were dropped off at the hotel by our tour representatives, who seemed very nice. They are who we will ring if we have any problems, so I hope we won’t be meeting them again. The bikes were very comfortable and look good quality so I’m optimistic that they’ll do us well.
We went looking for a beer garden after our meeting and found somewhere that looked very popular, only to discover that it was a low alcohol venue, possibly Muslim. I guess they couldn’t survive without beer, but there was no wine or cocktails of any sort. We rapidly decamped and found somewhere else for the last drink of the evening before another early night.