We farewelled Peter and Brigitte and headed south. They had advised us to use the motorway as the countryside was flat for 200 km and then industrial so most places of interest were about 300km away. As we drove near Bremen station we saw a train with so many new cars (Mercedes) on it that they filled the entire length of the bridge the train was crossing. Brigitte had told us at breakfast that the Bremen area was not wealthy as it had little industry now the ship building has declined but they are a distribution centre for Toyota cars and some cars are still built there. She said that the motorway into the city as full of cars from before 7am but we should be fine at 9am, which we were.
 
On the way we checked and found the trip to Chartres was much longer than the map suggested so we changed our destination and headed for Trier, a medieval town further south and near the Luxemburg border . It was interesting to cross the Rhine again near Koln (Cologne). We went off the motorway to try to get to the Moselle River and arrived in Cocham which was a very busy tourist town. It was very pretty and the river looked lovely with a number of boats clearly set to do river tours. However it was also very busy so we went on, got sort of lost and ended up back on the motorway.
 
When we arrived in Trier it started to rain, we couldn’t find the Information Centre, it was too wet to explore the city so we looked for a smaller place nearby. After a slightly stressful trip, not helped by heavy rain, John found a hotel which had a room, breakfast, internet and evening meals. We had to carry our heavy bags up 3 floors but we were prepared to take accommodation at this stage. It was a good reminder of the advantages of booking in advance. The staff are friendly however and the evening meal was good so it worked out fine overall. I finished off 3 blogs, checked the computer and John watched the news and we prepared for an early night so we could make the most of the next day.