Week 69 August 8-14 Lux

In mid August, we made the adventure to Luxembourg for a quick weekend trip.  This was a milestone trip for such a small country; it was Molly's 30th country visited.  After we had visited so many countries and Molly realized she was close to 30, it became a mission to visit 30 countries by the age of 30.  Mission complete!  But our trip was not only a quick drive across the border to accomplish the task, we visited Luxembourg City and went on a lovely hike in the Luxembourg wilderness.  

After work on Friday, we piled in the car and slogged through the Brussels traffic to arrive at our hotel just outside the main part of Luxembourg City.  We were late arriving and we were starving!  Instead of venturing out to find a restaurant, we decided to have a quick bite at the hotel restaurant... worst idea ever.  It was certainly the worst meal we have had since moving to Europe.  European restaurants are pretty reliable for an OK meal wherever you are... but this one was bad.  We went to bed a little discouraged about the start to our weekend adventure, but things brightened quickly the next morning when the hotel front desk informed us that the buses in Luxembourg City are free on Saturdays!  We decided to forgo the expensive hotel breakfast and head to the city center for a meal.  We found a nice cafe with a great cappuccino and breakfast bagel sandwiches (Coffee Lounge).  After breakfast, we began our exploration of the city.  Lux City is a really cool city with tons of green space and a large pedestrian only area.  Although the city is relatively small, it is interesting to explore as it is set on a plateau that drops into the river, with many ancient walls and castle ramparts scattered throughout.  We hit up the tourist information center for a city map and started their suggested walking tour.  We walked past the palace and their Notre Dame (one of Molly's favorite alters so far).

Lux City Saturday Market

The Palace

Notre Dame

  We ended up in the ravine around lunch time and stopped at a German restaurant.  We had a leisurely lunch with a few beers on the patio in the beautiful weather before continuing our stroll through the city.  Next up were the Bock casemates, a series of tunnels in the side of the hill that were used for defences.  They were last used in WWII as a bomb shelter for up to 35,000 people.  They are now open to the public.  We did not participate in the paid part of the tour as they seemed a bit overcrowded with everyone was taking a break from the heat, but we did explore a bit.  When we headed back into the center of town, they were having a festival of street performers.  We stopped and watched a few strange performances before heading for a pizza dinner.  This dinner was MUCH better than the evening before except we had some language issues... our French is terrible.  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to rest up for our early hike the next morning.

A view of the casemates

We like Lux City!

Street performers

On Sunday, we got up early to head to Echternach in the area of Luxembourg called "Little Switzerland".  We did a small piece of the 112km Mullerthall trail that runs throughout this region.  We left Echternach and hiked straight up out of the city to be rewarded with some amazing views.  As the trail was a loop, we hiked half, stopped at a natural amphitheater for lunch and then made the return.  After our 7.5 mi hike, we were pretty tired, but not so tired as too avoid walking into the city center to find ice cream before hoping in the car back to Belgium.  We really enjoyed our time in Luxembourg and since it is a short 2-3 hour journey, we plan to go back and explore more of their hiking trails.

A view of Echternach from above