Trier

I found myself staying in a small town near Trier called Kenn (got that?).  As an aside, I discovered that the smell of cigarette smoke will get through a sealed Ortlieb dry bag (it was supposed to be a non smoking room, but language was a big problem for me here, so maybe I got something wrong).

The main reason I went was to check out the Roman ruins.  I'm a poor student of history, but I get a kick out of Roman stuff for some reason.  Trier was the largest Roman city north of the alps.

Constantine's foot.  I have no idea how they worked that one out, but I tip my hat to them.

Five of this bridge's pillars date back to Roman times.

The Kaiserthermen, or Imperial Baths.  I'm still working on getting the photosphere images working on the blog, it may have to wait until I get home, so you shall just have to imagine what it's like to stand there.

For me the cool thing was the underground passages.  On automatic settings my camera makes them look like this:

But to the eye they look a lot more like this: 

In case I haven't mentioned, I switched from using a old film SLR that is entirely mechanical, without a light meter, to a digital camera about one week before I started traveling.  This scenario was interesting for me because I don't think I'd have been able to work out how to take it on film.  In fact, I'm not sure I could have done it using an optical viewfinder at all.  I'm quite enjoying using this new camera.

The amphitheater.

Underneath the amphitheater.

Porta Negra.

One of the reasons why the black gate was not torn down to salvage the stone was that it was used as a church for a long time.  There's a level where the aesthetic sharply changes from Roman to a much later Christian era.

The upper levels seem relatively unchanged, though.

Some tour group had these blokes dressed up in Roman uniforms shouting at them in German.  I reckon it would have been awesome if they spoke in Latin and just expected the tourists to work it out.