Blogs from Luxembourg, Europe - page 4

Today had a quiet start and ended up with a quiet finish. It snowed heavily for a few hours early in the day, coating buildings, cars and the ground with a cold sheet of snow. Tim, Sue and I walked down to the local Portugues Bakery and had coffee and pastries, caught a bus into town (no tickets again) and wandered around the old part of town, visited the Luxembourg City Art Gallery, went to a pretty cool bar, had more coffee and pastries and caught the bus home. Luxembourg is very unique and is built on a hill surrounded by deep valleys. It was virtually impregnable and heavily fortified until 1867 when the Treaty of London was signed. Basically, all the world powers that mattered at the time forced Luxembourg to dismantle the walls and ... read more

29 September 2017 To enhance our knowledge of The Battle of the Bulge gained when we visited the museum at Bastogne, today we visited the American and German military cemeteries in Luxembourg. They respectively contain the graves of 5,076 and 10,913 soldiers. They were both developed from provisional cemeteries created by the American Burial Service who began recovering bodies from both nations in late 1944. The American cemetery originally contained 8,412 bodies but in 1947, at the wishes of the relatives, some were returned to the USA to be buried there. The American Cemetery is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission and the German one by public donations and volunteer labour. After lunch we left Luxembourg, entered France and drove 175k south east to a campsite outside the town of Phalsbourg, 35k east of Strasbourg. ... read more

27 September2017 Esch-sur-Sûre is another settlement with a castle on a knoll and almost completely surrounded by its river. In the morning we explored this village and were astonished as to how picturesque it was in beautiful sunny weather. We then drove 40k eastwards through beautiful wooded valleys to the town of Echernach from where we had intended to do a walk in the Müllerthal forests. However, we didn’t like the look of the campsite so instead went south to just outside Luxembourg City where we were lucky to be given the last pitch on the site there.... read more

Heute bin ich in den Norden von Luxemburg nach Vianden gefahren. Die Autobahn dorthin war wirklich sehr schön. In der "schönsten Stadt der Ardennen" angekommen, habe ich glücklicherweise einen sehr guten Parkplatz gefunden. Danach bin ich gleich in ein empfohlenes Restaurant, wo ich eine kalte Platte mit Ardennenschinken und danach Pferdefilet mit Pommes Frites gegessen habe. Pferdefleisch hatte ich zuletzt 2002/03 regelmäßig bei Nestlé gegessen. Damals wie heute mit einer Pfeffersauce. Es wäre auch noch Käsefondue angeboten gewesen, aber das mache ich lieber selber oder esse es wie im Sommer 2014 in Zürich im Herkunftsland. Es war aber trotzdem keine leichte Entscheidung. Das Restaurant war in der Grand Rue, die auch vom Reiseführer angepriesen wurde, aber ich bin nicht diese Straße weiter ins Tal spaziert. Dazu war ich zu faul und ich habe die Straße noch ... read more

So as I'm getting ready to go to bed, there's a knock at the door. Here we go, time to move on, but no, it was a couple who lived in the next village, who had spotted me and so invited me to breakfast. So the next morning I cycled to theirs for a massive continental breakfast, and chatted for hours. The funny thing was Andrea was a big tour fan, but Tom couldn't care less, he wanted to go play with his focus RS round the Nurburgring. They even offered to drive me to the station with my bike, as it had been heavy rain all morning, and it didn't stop all day. But we weren't sure if there would be room for the bike on a train, as they were so busy, so I ... read more