Blogs from Luxembourg, Europe - page 11

Tuesday 1 March 2011 Today was a day of castles! We spent three hours exploring Vianden castle in the morning. As we mentioned last time, the restoration of the castle is ongoing and they've done a pretty good job thus far (there was a pretty serious concrete pour going on while we were there). By the look of the 3D models on display, there was an awful lot of the castle missing by the time they started restoring. It's not been an easy task by the look of it - the castle has had many incarnations, and it looks like they've had to make some difficult decisions. For example, the chimney of one of the kitchens could not be fully restored because they also wanted to restore a bedroom from a different era which was located ... read more

Monday morning the boys were of course off to work - and there were workmen arriving at 8.30am to work on the flat next door and to also replace a bit of under floor water pipe in A&M's flat (it comes thru form next door). As the owner of both flats Fernand explained to me, you cannot have external water pipes here as they would freeze up in the winter. The insulation here must be fab tho - I am typing this at 11pm in light jumper and thongs (to keep my feet off the floor) and its 10 deg. outside. It is just not cold inside at all - no heater on - and it does not seem that cold out either generally - altho 12 max. certainly not Blue Mountains cold. I did not ... read more

When it comes to Luxembourg and the tourist trail it is often missed or even drove through without knowing you have been in and out of a country in two or so hours. We were surprised by what Luxembourg has to offer and in particular once outside the city and visiting the country you will come across many picturesque villages amongst a forest and quite often having a castle overlooking proceedings. Luxembourg the city itself has plenty of green around the city and a highlight for us was the visiting the underground tunnels for the old castle that seem to go on forever. It has become into disrepair of late but since they recently started to uncover some important artefacts they are looking after the old castle very well now and paying a fee is a ... read more

LUXEMBURG 31/07/10 This morning we drove into Luxembourg City. They had a tidy pedestrian only town centre with a small palace and a fresh produce market. There wasnt much of huge interest in the city so after a quick look around we headed north through Luxembourg towards Brussels in Belgium. Before crossing the boarder we stopped in a small town for lunch called Esch-sur-sure. It was a cute little town situated on the bend in a river, therefore it had water on 3 sides. In the centre of the town up a cliff are the ruins of a castle (927). From there we drove to Brussels... read more

Well, off to Luxemburg we were. That tiny little country that has to share a Eurail Pass with the Netherlands and Belgium. What is there to do in Luxemburg you ask?? We were wondering the same thing. Rolling into the City (there is only one according to the locals) was one of the most amazing first impressions of a city Dan has ever had. The train crossed the river valley before it would reach the station, the green space below you with the steep sides just seemed so amazing; you couldn't tell you were in a city at all. After the train, first things first... what to do in Luxemburg?? We went straight to information where we learned about the Luxemburg attraction card, which would get us into sights all over the country!!! We didn't dare ... read more