Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 2015
Tour Day 1: Trier
On the first day of our tour, we bid a fond farewell to Paris and headed out on our new adventure.
We reserved seats on a train from Paris to Trier that stopped briefly for a train change in Luxembourg. We basked in the peace and quiet of the morning, enjoying a packed breakfast we purchased in the train station as the French countryside passed us by. We were excited to stop in Luxembourg and add an extra country to our list (ok, we know that it feels like cheating to add a country to our list when we only spent 20 minutes in the train station, but the station was open air and we could see some of the tops of a few buildings, and it is our country list, right? So we added it. I'm sure we will be back one day for a real visit). Navigating the train was easy and the entire trip took about 3 hours. When we arrived in Trier, we were planning on walking to the hotel with the directions we were provided, but instead we saw a friendly looking couple wearing Seattle Seahawks gear and took a gamble that they were on our tour. We ended up chatting and sharing a cab to the hotel. We were so excited to have met our first tour friends!
Trier
Our hotel in Trier was the most unique place we stayed in - it is part hotel and part retirement village. We got to meet several of the senior residents who all looked so happy to have company. The rooms were large apartments and very cozy. We never would have found it on our own, but it was one of our favorite accommodations. After dropping off our belongings, we wandered into the center of town for lunch. We were amazed by how good the food was in Germany! We had a simple meal of sausage and weiner schnitzel, but it was so delicious. There was a market going on in the town square, so we enjoyed people-watching while sitting at the outdoor cafe and trying to soak in the fact that we were actually in Germany! Another happy surprise about Germany - Germans seem to love ice cream as much as we do! Tamara had the best dessert of the trip from a little shop in Trier - a caramel ice cream topped with streusel. David tried out a few of his newly learned German phrases by ordering coffee. We laughed when he came back with two coffees - he had mistakenly ordered two and didn't know how to tell them he only wanted one, so he bought them both! Learning new languages is always an adventure! We returned to our hotel to freshen up before meeting our tour group.
The beginning of a wonderful friendship!
We met our group and our tour guide, Hans, and realized we were in for an awesome two weeks right off the bat! Everyone clicked and starting talking like old friends. We would come to learn that Hans knows just about everything - including being fluent in several languages! We met in a meeting room in the hotel and were joined by a slightly confused senior resident who was looking for his regular afternoon social event - Hans had a bit of difficulty convincing him that he had the wrong day and the wrong group, so he stayed for a bit before deciding Hans was right about the day and making a graceful exit. After a quick intro to the tour, we took a walk around town and visited the Cathedral. We settled into our first group dinner and really got a chance to get to know each other. We had a delicious meal where we got to try spaetzle for the first time. Afterwards, we headed back to the room and turned in early in preparation for a busy day ahead.