Summary: Mandi and I drove from Nuremberg to Trier, making a stop at the Frankfurt airport to pick up Mandi’s mom Bette, her grandma Nancy, and Nancy’s friend Cassie. We enjoyed delicious little sausages in Nuremberg and saw a bunch of Roman ruins in Trier before heading to Hahn airport for our flight to Finland.
18 October
Mandi and I flew in to Prague, but flying out was crazy expensive, so we planned to meet up with the rest of our party at the Frankfurt airport using a combination of train and rental car with a stop in Nuremberg. The train ride from Prague to Nuremberg was beautiful – it looked like it’d be fun to take a couple of days, stopping in Plzen and some small town between there and Prague. Just from the train we saw rock climbers, bicyclists, and even a golf course.
We arrived in Nuremberg at dusk, and did a little investigation at the train station to figure out how to get to the airport to pick up our rental car the next morning. Nuremberg happens to be one of the few cities in Germany where you can take the metro to the airport. We dropped our bags off at Le Meridien Grand, our fancy but dated Starwood hotel, and promptly got lost. You’d think we’d know by now, the maps in Rick Steves guidebooks are usually a little simpler than reality. It also didn’t help that there were three streets starting with “Konig” in our neighborhood. We finally got going in the right direction, towards the castle and market square.
We never made it to the castle because we got hungry and found a place to eat a bunch of “nurembergers” – delicious little sausages that look and taste like breakfast sausages. I’d go back to Nuremberg just for more of those little sausages, but I suspect there’s a lot of other stuff to see and do there. It reminded me a little of Berlin – a bustling mix of old and new.
19 October
We had a very expensive breakfast at the hotel, but there were nurembergers and eggs, so I guess it was worth it. The u-bahn/metro took us straight to the airport, where Avis upgraded us to a sweet minivan from the Passat wagon we’d reserved. I’d written down some Google Maps directions to Frankfurt airport while on the wifi at our hotel in Prague so we got on the autobahn pretty easily. On the way I figured out how to switch the navigation thing from German to English, which made it more useful but less entertaining.
We left Nuremberg a little late and our crew arrived a little early, so by the time we got there they’d been chatting with the airport police about how to call us. Apparently Bette’s phone required the prefix stuff but Mandi’s didn’t, odd because they’re both on AT&T. I’ve noticed my phone has something called “International dialing assistance” – maybe Bette’s phone didn’t have that. We eventually collected Bette, Nancy, and Cassie and hopped back on the autobahn for Trier.
On the way we stopped at one fancy rest stop, complete with a restaurant and restroom attendant, and one that was just a 7-11-like gas station. The second one did have giant cans of Dutch beer, so it wasn’t all bad.
The last time Mandi and I were in Trier we spent about an hour driving in circles trying to find Hotel Frankenturm, probably because we were trying to use the Rick Steves Germany book’s map to navigate. This time Mandi drove right to it, thanks to our minivan’s navigation thing, not my uncanny sense of direction. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone at the hotel to check us in, so we put our bags back in the car and went for a walk around town.
Trier is an old Roman city, allegedly the oldest city in Germany, so it’s full of tourist-pleasing Roman ruins. Coincidentally, later in the trip we visited friends in Aachen, which also claims to be the oldest city in Germany. Hotel Frankenturm is just off the market square so we headed there first. From the square a big cobblestone pedestrian street leads straight to Porta Nigra, a huge Roman city gate. After our stroll, our hotel’s restaurant opened promptly at 5 pm and we managed to check in, even though they’d lost our reservation. October isn’t exactly the peak of tourist season, but we still felt lucky we didn’t have to wander around looking for other accommodations. We had dinner right at our hotel’s restaurant, where we enjoyed a meal that looked remarkably like some of the meals we’d enjoyed in Prague.
20 October
In the morning we walked the other way from Porta Nigra, past the cathedral, basilica, and palace to the Roman baths. The baths complex includes a small museum, a sprawl of excavated tunnels, and a huge chunk of what I assume was an exterior wall of the baths. We had lunch at a place back on the market square and hit the road for Hahn airport for our flight to Finland.
Next stops: Tampere, Helsinki, and Porvoo.
