Luxembourg

Saturday 19 July - Luxembourg

We had a rather slow start this morning as we promised ourselves not to get up until we were awake. We drove first up to Vianden which has a really nice chateau. It was renovated in about 1868 from a complete ruin (it was in the 17th century that is was last active) and looks really impressive. They have some rooms set up in the style from that period and the rest in just empty, except for the chapel which has been painted. Because David had been inside before I went in by myself and he went off to take some pictures elsewhere.

We were then at a bit of a loss of what to do because we didn’t have a guide book and David couldn’t remember the name of the place he wanted to go to. So we went to the town of Wiltz. It has an upper and a lower town. The castle was not very noticeable from where we parked and looks more like a large house but we did find some information and found where to go next. We climbed up their memorial tower which is tall and thin and has good views over the town.

So we next went to Bourscheid to see the castle there. That was really grand on the hill by itself. Now a ruin but looks impressive. Again I went in alone and enjoyed incredible views from the original keep down to the river far below that formed an “S” bend and across to the surrounding countryside. There was a function going on inside one area and it was a little further along that I was lucky to see a bride and groom coming through the gate. The groom had a sort of kilt on and the bride had what I supposed to be a traditional sort of wedding gown. There were a few people in costume around too.

We drove down to Luxembourg for the night in a torrential downpour. God was blessing us as always as we got the very last site in the campground outside of the main city. Five minutes later and we would have missed out as someone came in right after us and were turned away. We were hoping to go into the town to have a look but the torrential weather caught up with us again so we were delayed in the caravan and as they lock the gates and no-one goes in or out after 10:30 pm we though it best to stay where we are and found a restaurant in the leisure centre that is beside the park that was very nice Italian food. So far we haven’t had a chance to go shopping properly so we can make our own food each day.

Sunday 20 July – Luxembourg

Today was spent mostly in Luxembourg City. Being Sunday, it was quite easy to find a park and it was free. We parked just across the river near the Adolphe Bridge. We walked down into the Petrusse Valley and up the other side past the Casino Luxembourg to get views of the bridge. This bridge is magnificent. When it was finished in 1903 the stone arch, with its span of 85 metres was the largest in the world (although this only lasted for less than a year we were told!). The valley is impressive in itself with lots of trees and a small river running down it. Definitely a great natural fortification.

We then walked past the entrance to the Petrusse Casemates and found that they were open and doing tours on the hour. We had about half an hour to wait so kept wandering through the town a little way. We walked into William Square where they were having some sort of sports tournament for the school holidays and looked at the Equestrian Statue of William II (Grand Duke from 1840-1849) then on to the Palace of the Grand Dukes to look at the outside. Grand I would say but not overly impressive in terms of some of the other palace’s I have seen.

It was then time to go back to visit the casemates. This was done though a guided tour, which the guide did in both English and German. We went through a section of about 1 km of tunnels but there used to be 23 km there and there are still about 17 km left after the de-fortification of the city. Across the other side of the valley the National Bank is now using the casemates as their vaults – unfortunately we could not explore that area!We went down some very steep old stairs to come out in the valley and then worked our way up again to where the defences were and then back to where we had started. During the second world war the city hid down in these tunnels and we did see a few toilets that had been added in for this (but were now filled in).

After the tour we went to the visitors office to see if we could get into the palace but the English tour was sold out and we decided it probably wasn’t worth it to do a tour in another language so we carried on our walk. We went to the Place D’Armes and saw the City Palace (big fence around so couldn’t see properly) and a statues to two poets, Dicks and Lentz. We then went to the Cathedral to the Blessed Virgin. Down in the undercroft they have a family vault for the Duchy family that is fairly new. It is decorated in Roman mosaic and the floor is also a blue stone and is polished until the whole thing is reflective! Inside the church they had lovely stained glass window at the front. We entered sort of in the middle and turning towards the back they had huge stone pillars, each one carved in different pattern. The back area was elaborately decorated as well in incredible detail.

We left the church and headed towards the Bock Casemates. Along the way was an incredible view of the sheer walls of cliff that fall down to the river far below. We walked around the top and went inside the Casemates. These ones we could explore ourselves. There was a large wide section where they used to have cannons but the path did go down some tight spiral staircases to some lower areas. They had a lot of smaller sort of tunnels about the height of a small child. Dave and I both went in different ones. Dave got to a dead end but the one I went in kept going after I went around to corners but with no torch and only the flash on my camera to see I didn’t fancy bumping my head of falling down a hold because I couldn’t see so turned back. It started to rain while we were inside and it was fun to look out of the cannon openings to watch it. These also had fabulous views along the valley.

When the rain stopped we journey down to the river and followed the city wall a little way then headed back along the river. We took a small detour up to a little pepper-pot looking watchtower and then walked along the top of the valley back to the car.

We drove a short way to end the day, crossing the border into Germany and spent the night in Trier. We spent quite a lot of time looking for a spot to park and eventually found an area that was set aside for campervans near a McDonalds and a park and ride. We did drive back into Trier to try and get a head-start on looking around tomorrow but it was a bit too dark and we did have a look at a couple of things but it was getting dark so we will need to re-visit them tomorrow.