The Luxembourg

I was reasonably excited about visiting Luxembourg City. It would mean I've visited the capital city of all three tiny countries in Europe, after visiting Andorra earlier on this trip and Vaduz (the capital of Liechtenstein) on a previous trip.

Luxembourg City is up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646146172011/

We decided to park a fair way away at a free park and ride and walk to the city centre. I'd picked out a few things for us to see on the way. It was about 40 minutes without a stop to the city from the car park.

Our first stop was at a park called Parc de Merl. It was a green spot in the middle of what was otherwise a concrete jungle, complete with well-kept flower boxes, sunflower beds and a couple of fountains:

Parc de Merl

We then wandered towards the Adolpho Bridge, which supposedly gives you the best view of the city. We arrived to find out it was closed for construction work for a serious stretch of time. In typical European style, they'd built a completely new bridge while the main one was closed for construction. It did have a nice view of the old town:

Old town from the bridge

We wandered along the opposite side of the river for a while, before coming across another bridge back towards Luxembourg's Notre Dame. Inside the church it was quite nice, but nothing we hadn't really seen before - we've been into so many churches by now it's not even funny any more.

We also walked past another manicured flowerbed with some flags, I later found out it was a Remembrance Monument of some description:

Remembrance Monument

After cruising old town for a while, we headed back to the car via a green park that stretches the entire western side of old town. It was quite nice to walk through, and we followed that up with a walk through Grund, which is the park that runs next to a tiiiiiny canal that is at the bottom of a massive valley in Luxembourg.

Some of the other best photos of today

Tomorrow we'll head to Kerkrade, which will be our base for exploring the Double As of Aachen (Germany) and Maastricht (Netherlands). See you there!

A festival in Vianden

Today was our first of two day trips from Illange into Luxembourg. Our first trip was to Vianden, a tiny tourist town very close to the German border with Luxembourg.

A few driving photos have been added to Flickr (1st set), plus Vianden has its own set as well (2nd set):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645744219648/

On the way to Vianden, we went through some really nice scenery. There were a couple of panorama stops, as well as a drive through a really nice valley. We found out later that the valley is the base for most hikes in the Luxembourg area. We also happened upon the town of Beaufort, where the weather scales first came to fruition.

On to Vianden, where the main attraction is the castle, situated right on the top of town. There's a chairlift up to the castle, but what fun is that? We walked up to the castle, which was actually relatively quick compared to all the other walks we've done instead of getting the 'official transit mode'.

Because I'm 'still a student', I got discounted access to the castle, where a medieval festival was being held for the week we were there. This meant there were medieval demonstrations and stalls in a fair chunk of the castle. Some of the most popular were the shooting demonstrations, the flag-twirling routines and the period performances:

Medieval festival

The castle itself was quite nice, with lots of heritage to it as well. On the way back the sun was just in the right spot, and it lit up really well in the golden afternoon sun:

The castle exterior

Down below, the town is quite touristy, now that everyone knows about it. See, the internet isn't all good. It's still quite pretty though, with a small river running through the middle, and flowers up and down it:

Vianden town

One trip up and back was plenty enough for us, so we went back to the car and made the drive back to the apartment. Tomorrow we'll plan on visiting Luxembourg City, which is the capital and main city of Luxembourg (spooky!). Until then!