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Published: August 25th 2023
Grand Ducal Palace
Official residence of the grand duke of Luxembourg. Just opposite our favourite chocolate shop :-)In October 2022, my dear friend Christiane and I had a big anniversary to celebrate: 20 years ago, we met at university, and that was the start of a wonderful, deep friendship. A reason to celebrate! We decided to spend a weekend in Luxembourg together, the second weekend in October. I was happy to drive and picked her up by car in Hagen on Friday in the late morning. Three hours later, at around 2 pm, we arrived in Luxembourg. We had a late lunch at Girotondo where we had one of the best pizzas I ever had, with tasty mozzarella and a crunchy, think crust. Of course, we also had some champagne to our wonderful friendship.
Then we walked into the pedestrian area and listened to a street musician for a bit. The weather was splendid, and we walked the streets for a bit before sitting down at a chocolate shop, Nathalie Bonn, just opposite the Grand-Ducal Palace. We indulged in a wonderful cup of drinking chocolate and a piece of very tasty cake and enjoyed sitting outside and watching the people passing by. In the early evening, we checked into our hotel, Mama Shelter. It was a cool
and fancy place, with colourful decoration and all kinds of funny souvenir items one could buy. Our bedside lamps were decorated with masks (one rabbit and one Toy Story character) that we could put on to take some funny pictures. We relaxed in our stylish room for a bit and finished the day with drinks in the hotel bar on the rooftop.
On Saturday morning, we had breakfast in a nice little café in town and then joined a guided walking tour of the city. Luxembourg, or officially The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a small country that, because of its location and geography, used to be of strategic importance. It is more than a city-state, around the city there is countryside and more towns and villages. Part of the city of Luxembourg is located on a rock above a gorge, and this strategic location lent itself to building a castle. These castle walls can be walked nowadays, as can be the casemates (which we refrained from doing, the weather was too splendid to spend time in the dark and humid caves). Nowadays, Luxembourg is the country of banking and finance, and we learned that due to increasing cost
Guided walking tour of Luxembourg II
Getting deeper into the winding corridor. of housing, it becomes more and more difficult for the people of Luxembourg to live in the city. Only about half of the population is originally from Luxembourg, the others come from other countries. There is a local language, Luxembourgish, but people there also speak French or German, and several of the newspapers are multi-lingual. The city has lots of different building styles. There are old semi-timbered houses, houses in classicistic style, some art nouveau buildings. There is also an impressive mix of old and modern architecture, within the old city centre, but also on the other side of the river and valley where some of the European institutions can be found. The old city centre and the fortress are UNESCO World Heritage.
To supplement what we learned on the guided tour, I asked ChatGPT to write a short description of the history of Luxembourg. Here is what the AI came up with:
“Luxembourg is a small landlocked country located in Western Europe, bordered by Belgium, Germany, and France. The history of Luxembourg dates back to the Roman Empire, with evidence of human settlement in the area dating back to 5000 BC.
“The region that is now
Guided walking tour of Luxembourg III
Coming out the other side of the building. Luxembourg was ruled by various tribes and kingdoms over the centuries, including the Celts, Romans, Franks, and Burgundians. In 963, Luxembourg was granted to Count Siegfried of Ardennes by the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, and it remained under the rule of the House of Luxembourg for several centuries.
“In the late 14th century, Luxembourg became part of the Burgundian Netherlands and then fell under Spanish rule. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht gave Luxembourg to the House of Nassau, and it remained under their rule until the French Revolution.
“During the 19th century, Luxembourg was caught up in the power struggles of Europe and was ruled by several different countries. In 1839, it gained independence as a neutral state, and in 1867, it became a fully sovereign state under the Treaty of London, which guaranteed its neutrality.
“During World War II, Luxembourg was occupied by Nazi Germany, and it was liberated by the Allies in 1944. After the war, Luxembourg became a founding member of the United Nations, the European Coal and Steel Community (which later evolved into the European Union), and NATO.
“Today, Luxembourg is a prosperous country known for its high standard of
Guided walking tour of Luxembourg IV
View into the sky from the corridor. living, banking industry, and multicultural population.”
Thank you for this! Now let’s return to our experiences. We did not follow the entire guided walking tour because Christiane was a bit unwell. She had been struggling with a cold all week and I had been impressed with her determination to go on the guided tour anyway. She had done her very best to follow as long as she could, but at some point, she started feeling exhausted. Thus, we had lunch at a Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut has a special meaning to us because one day after having spent a day in the sauna we went to a Pizza Hut. We were so hungry that we kept eating, eating and eating (salad from the buffet, garlic bread, pizza, chocolate lava cake) until even the waiter was surprised at how much we could eat. We sort of rolled ourselves out of the restaurant after this dinner. We still tell each other this story, so we felt like the Pizza Hut here was the right place to have lunch. The food was a real disappointment, though, and to compensate for this, we went back to the chocolate shop we had visited the
day before to indulge in hot chocolate and cake once more. After this, we were happy again and felt ready for another walk.
This was a self-guided walking tour of the castle. It started high up on the walls, at Corniche, a viewpoint from which one can see the steep rocks on top of which the castle was built, and the valley below with river Alzette. We walked along the walls on the rim of the gorge, and then gradually down into the gorge, with amazing views of the lower part of the city, across the river Alzette, past the abbey, and up the hill on the other side, to Plateau du Rham. There were more walls to climb, which was fun and offered more stunning views of the city. From there, we walked into the lower part of the city once more and concluded our walk with a gin and tonic at a pub. When we emerged from the pub, it was dark already (well, we had entered the pub at dusk, so it was not that we had spent hours in there...). We walked a bit further and then took the lift that brought us back to
Railway bridge
... with a modern part of the city in the background. the upper part of the city again. We went back to our hotel and had an early night.
On Sunday morning, we enjoyed the wonderful breakfast buffet of our hotel before heading off towards Wolfsschlucht (“Wolf’s Gorge”), a sort of canyon not far from the town of Echternach, still in the country of Luxembourg, but outside the city itself. The trail started along a canal, which was a nice and easy walk, and then climbed up through the forest. One would not expect a canyon there; it was just a walk up the hill in a forest. And then suddenly we could see the canyon! There was one steep wall to our right, with rocks that looked as if someone had piled them up layer by layer. At one point, there was a vertical crack in the wall that turned out to be a cave that we could walk into. It was pitch black and went rather far into the mountain, until at some point it ended and we turned round and walked back outside. As we continued our walk, another rock appeared on our left, and it was like a tower, with stairs leading up on its one
River Alzette
Seen from above, with Neumünster Abbey on the right. side. We climbed them and sat on a bench for a while, enjoying the view of the canyon behind us and looking at other hikers coming up the tower. Then, we crossed a narrow bridge over to another tower, from where we had a nice view into the valley and onto the river below. We left this side of the canyon and climbed up the stairs leading up the other side of the canyon. There, we could walk along the rim for a bit and enjoy more views of the valley below.
We wanted to return to the car in a loop, but this was not exactly easy because there were no helpful signs along the path, and we used a combination of Google Maps and our sense of orientation to find our way back to the car again. And we managed to find it!
We had had a big breakfast, but after the long walk, we were hungry again. We drove into the nearby village of Echternach and had a nice vegetarian quiche in a restaurant with a very friendly lady serving the food. After our late lunch, we continued across the market square and found another
Topography and architecture I
Natural rock wall, old and modern buildings. nice place where we had some coffee and cake. We walked Echternach for a bit and sat down by one of the churches to meditate in the beautiful autumn sun. Then it was time to start heading back.
The journey home was not quite as pleasant as the journey to Luxembourg because there was a lot more traffic (as to be expected on a Sunday night!), but this could not spoil the wonderful time we had had together. I was deeply grateful for my wonderful friend with whom everything I can think of is fun, even horrible movies like “Matrix 4”, wine tastings with bad wines and a bad sommelier, or horrible theatre productions. How good is it then to experience a wonderful weekend like this with such a friend!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Luxembourg
I'd love to visit Luxembourg. The architecture is lovely.