Today is a down day for us and we need it! The room was comfortable last night and we both sleep well. Dick is up and working on the Blog…we are way behind…by 8:00AM. Carolyn sleeps in until after 9:00AM. It is nice not to have to pack up!
The hotel provides a very nice spread for breakfast and we are one of the last guests into the dining room. It turns out that we have an assigned table for our stay with our name as “FAMALIE NEAL” written on a ceramic place card. We find that a nice, classy touch. The buffet offerings include fried and scrambled eggs, croissants, hard rolls, several kinds of yogurt, bacon, jams, a tea caddie, coffee, etc. They also have riesemilch or, as we call it at home, sweet rice or sticky rice.
We talk to one of the owners, Oliver Meyer, about things to do. We take the hotel car down to the center of Cochem and explore there. As we have said, this is a three-day weekend in Germany. It is actually a Catholic Church holiday but nobody seems to know just what it is when asked about it. The town of Cochem is a German tourist destination at the best of times and this weekend, it is crawling with people.
Every parking place is full and the motorcycle crowd is pulling in by the tens. There must be several hundred motorcycles parked in the areas through which we walk. While quaint and pretty, the village is given over to the tourist trade and offers nothing that we have not seen too much of already. Again there are no shops with the nice handmade things we have found in Germany in the past but we do treat ourselves to some delious chocolate candy and some pastries! 
We cannot seem to catch a taxi on the street, so we go to the information office and they call one for us. There is an antique car show in the parking lot
so we check that out while we wait for the taxi to come.
€8 later, we arrive back at our hotel. We spend the afternoon, reading, working on the blog and enjoying our balcony view of Cochem and the Mosel River Valley. 
About 5:00PM we go for a short drive up river toward Trier.
We had thought we would rent some bikes this afternoon, but that did not happen. All the restaurants are full or people and we are glad we are not looking for a place to eat. The river drive is very nice this time of day.
Dinner is included in today’s room cost and we go down about 8:30PM. The sun is still up and it seems like 6:00PM in Texas in the middle of the summer. While good and well presented, the food does not compare to what we had last night but we enjoy a quiet meal and share a bottle of local Gewürztraminer. We had pre-ordered a pastry wrapped salmon dish, however we are not fans of turnips and they were on the plate as a vegetable and the leaves were in the salmon wrap. It seems to us that most German meals are white! White asparagus, white potatoes, white turnips, white sauce and almost white pastry wrapped salmon. This all white type of plate has been the standard for several meals. Back in the room, Carolyn reviews pictures from the last few days until the small hours of the morning while Dick, as usual, crashes at a reasonable time.
After another typical German breakfast of hard rolls, croissants, ham, jam, yogurt, and a hard-boiled egg, we pack up but leave our luggage in the room while we explore Trier a little more. After taking some photos of the Porta Nigra,
we buy tickets for €14 for a 30-minute tram ride around the historic, old city. This takes us to some places we have not seen such as the Roman baths,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We wonder why they cannot make these tram cars with a little better suspension system. Even on city streets, this one is rough and when we hit cobblestone streets, it is uncomfortable. As we drive along the street beside the baths we pass a long section of the city walls.
for some pictures with the morning light. The fruit
and flower market
are in full swing! 
The bascilica was built for Emperor Constantine around 305AD, then in the 1500's part of it was incorporated into a Renaissance castle so it is rather odd looking as seen in yesterday's picture. The church has lots of beautiful marble carvings at each column and it also has a double choir nave, one at each end. One is for the altar 
and the other was for the Emperor! 
and take some rather crooked photos of its simple but elegant interior.
They are setting up for a program in front of the church so we can't get a picture of the colorful facade, but do take some in the garden and well tended graveyard beside the church.
That does it for our second visit to Trier. We were here the first time in 1984. Our impression of the city is very positive. It is clean, easy to navigate with a good GPS and has some significant sights to see.
What a beautiful view! We wind our way down the steep sides of the river valley and find our hotel with ease. It is the Moselromantik-Hotel Kessler-Meyer. Our room is very nice 
and our balcony has a view of the river and the castle.
The hotel is new looking with a pool and spa and nice public areas.
We are amazed to see how steep some of the vineyards are. The valley sides are terraced in most places
though this one is a close runner up!.
In Koblenz, we go to the Deutschen Eck or German Corner where the Mosel and the Rhine merge. Across from the point is the Festung (Fortress) Ehrenbreitstein
which was used to house captured flyers, mostly British, during WWII. It is a formidable looking place. After a stroll through the old, pedestrian only part of the city, we head back up the Mosel Valley to Alken, on the east side of the river. Our goal is the restaurant Burg Thurant. 
The menu is in German, naturally, and the owner/waiter has very limited English but we manage to select a delicious meal. Carolyn has a bowl of potato soup and prawns done scampi style but with a twist that we cannot quite place. We both agree they are wonderful. Dick has a seasonal garden salad and salmon. The salmon, grilled to perfection, is served over tagliatelli (SP) pasta with a sumptuous cream sauce and sautéed spinach. We share a bottle of local Riesling wine,
and crash!
We are aiming for Bastogne as Dick wants to see the Mardasson Memorial
and museum there. Bastogne was a road network center, held by the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
From there we head across Luxemburg on more local roads. The countryside is stunning…rolling hills with deep valleys and that beautiful new spring green of farmland. All the houses have beautiful flower gardens and, as expected, the villages are wonderfully quaint and surprisingly with no tourists. We then head through the remote Mullerthal area in western Luxemburg. This is a hilly, heavily forested area with some weird rock formations. There is evidence that it gets lots of hiking and camping use in the season, but it is cool and damp today. We then turn southward toward Trier and drive along the Saur River.
The Porta Nigra is a huge sandstone structure that was part of the Roman wall around the city. Built in the 2nd Century AD, the white sandstone has turned a dirty black over the years giving it the name of “Black Gate” in Latin. The information center representative calls for us, confirms there is space available, and we walk over and check in. It is an old hotel, but clean and has in room WIFI, which we need to find a room for the next three nights. Dick moves the car to the hotel parking lot while Carolyn logs onto the internet. With the aid of the booklet and a booking site, we make reservations for the next three nights: two nights on the Mosel River and one night on the Rhine. That gets us through the long weekend.
It has a nice pedestrian shopping area near the Porta Nigra which we explore and where we pick up some sandwiches to eat for a late lunch as we walk down toward the main square which is surrounded by colorful old buildings.
There is a market going on in the middle of the square and the locals are buying!
We then head back to the hotel by way of the Cathedral or Liebfrauenkirche.
Along the way, we find an antique shop with the mother-of-pearl demitasse spoons we have been looking for. Dick now has his Birthday present! 
It is still white asparagus season in Germany, so we try their version along with a schnitzel and some apple strudel. It tastes very good. We walk back to the room by way of the Porta Nigra 
and observe that they roll up the sidewalks in this town early and it is time we joined them.
Today, the hill is behind fences and one must purchase an admission that includes, the one we buy did anyway, admission to a film, another display, the wax museum, the diorama, Lion Hill and a 40-minute tram ride around the field. If you are fleet of foot, you can walk the tram route on your own but it would take two hours and we have neither the time nor the fleetness of foot.
and then down across the field where the French cavalry made their assault and on toward the area that was the French left to La Belle Alliance. 
La Belle Alliance is in the middle of the French line and to which Napoleon came in the late afternoon of June 18, 1815. It is also where Wellington and Blucher met after the battle. From here, the route takes us along a ridge top that contained the French right and their artillery batteries
and then circles along sunken lanes,
which were there during the battle, to the farm Papelotte
and then back along the ridge which contained the Allied line’s left wing.
In fact, as the tram rounded the bend in the path at Papelotte, a woman in green, rubber boats crossed the road carrying a hoe.
Carolyn is very tired of the motorways even if you can go really fast on them! Plus the quite and peaceful beauty of The Ardennes and the Rhine and Mosel valleys are calling so we head SE toward them. After several miscues, we arrive in the Ardennes. The GPS has been a blessing and a curse on this trip!
Using a directory of small hotels from last night’s stay, we try two again. The first one has not opened yet for the summer but we find one about 30km down the road in Trois Ponts. Our hotel is the Le Beau Site, sitting high on a hillside,
and the building dates from 1905. It is definitely vintage, but we had a great room with a nice view (the one with the open french doors)!
Trois Ponts played a key role in The Battle of the Bulge as it is a choke point, or it was at the time, of small roads that must all cross a stream here. There was heavy fighting in the town in December 1944 but it is now a sleepy, beautiful, little village in a lovely valley. 
The most exciting thing happening now is the rail traffic that flows through on five tracks. The trains, electrically powered, are very quiet. All you hear is the sound of the wheels. We spend some time making a plan for our last days over cocktails in the room and enjoy the view from our little balcony the picture above). 
We then drive the short distance (5km) to the village of Coos and enjoy a wonderful rendition of trout almandine along with a bottle of Gewürztraminer wine. We leave the restaurant at 10:00PM with the sky still quite bright and people still eating in the restaurant. We WILL be back!
