Here we are again

Apologies to all who have been eagerly awaiting their daily fix of Saskia tales: unfortunately the technology let us down and we have not been able to get online for a couple of days. However, here we are again, nicely settled in Trier, the biggest town in the region, and full of Roman ruins. Here is the Roman bridge as a foretaste:

We will stay here a couple of nights, and tomorrow take the bus to visit the town and do the tourism stuff.  We have had a good cruise up the Mosel, 200 kilometres from Koblenz now. Sometimes the traffic is heavy:

Sometimes we have the river, and the locks, to ourselves. Which is nicer.

Our friends Mike and Joan left us on Wednesday, heading back to Frankfurt and thence to Boston. Here we managed lunch on the river bank, with essential supplies to hand:

The vineyards through the Mosel have been amazing: who drinks all this wine? The Germans themselves, I suppose. Here is the Piesporter vineyard: way back when, Piesporter was not much esteemed in the UK – universally referred to as Piss Poor…..

Looking for somewhere to tie up for lunch yesterday we came across the Café Rosi, offering a pontoon. They also offered a truly excellent venison steak with mushroom gravy as dish of the day. We proceeded feeling very satisfied.

Last night we were at a place delighting in the name Neumagen-Dhron, which had a very tight harbor, no WiFi connection, and an ancient Roman carving of men and wine barrels in a boat, which we failed to photograph.

As we meander along, we cannot fail to notice all the work going on on the infrastructure in Germany. The economy does give the impression of going places. Here’s a massive motorway bridge, for example:

The other noticeable thing – apart from the proliferation of enormous campsites along the rivers –  is that the Germans don’t much like using plastic. Cash is king, unlike in France or elsewhere. And even the ATM machines and supermarkets tend not to like our French plastic, which can cause embarrassments. But it’s not far to France now – another 100 kms or so, and we are currently managing about 50 a day quite comfortably.