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!

Drenched!

Today was our designated travel day to further north in France, very close to the Luxembourg border. We made a couple of stops along the way, although different from our original planned stops.

As well as looking at my new photos in the Driving set (1st link) and my new set for Metz (2nd link), you can admire my new Flickr cover image of Grindelwald.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645713526647/

Our two planned stops for today were the towns of Nancy and Metz. We had originally planned to visit them on one of the Salzburg days as a day trip, but it wound up being too full a day to complete. Plus they were on the way.

On arrival into Nancy, it was raining. Meh. There wasn't a whole lot to see anyway, plus it was all mostly outside stuff. So on we went. Eventually we stopped at this lovely garden just past Saverne, appropriately titled Jardin Botanique de Saverne, by which time it had stopped raining. It wasn't full of wildly colourful flowerbeds, instead a gigantic variety of different types of plants, some common and some rare.

We had a wander for quite a while, and my favourite section ended up being the carnivorous section, which was full of Venus Flytraps and other scary looking contraptions:

Jardin Botanique de Saverne

It started raining soon after we left the gardens, and dried up shortly before we arrived in Metz. We decided to visit Metz anyway, despite the threat of more rain. It's actually a really pleasant place - unfortunately it started raining again about half an hour into our visit. This cut short our visit before we could get to the gardens and parks surrounded by palaces. So that was a shame. Something to do next time!

Best of Metz

On the way back to the car, it truly started to rain. For the first time, I could equate the rain we were getting here to typical rain in Australia. It HAMMERED down for about 20 minutes. We sat under cover and watched the cars fly along and kick up an enormous spray. In the second photo you can see how heavily it's raining - we could barely see 50 metres in front of us:

...And the worst of Metz

Eventually the rain cleared up and we made a dash for the car before it stated raining again. We eventually made it to our destination, Illange, at about 8:00. Our host met us at the apartment, and we settled in. It's actually a really nice apartment, the most well-furnished of any apartments we've stayed in so far, and the cheapest (except for our Swiss chalet).

Join me tomorrow for our first foray into the land of Luxembourg!

Down to Colmar

Today we made a day-trip down to Colmar, which is a smaller version of Strasbourg, with an old town and Little Venice. It's about an hour's drive south by car.

You can see my favourite Colmar photos on Flickr here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646118297375/

I'd found us a free parking space, where we could park for free for three hours with one of those blue 'discs' that Europe has, where you put the time you arrived on it and then you know how long you can park until.

I didn't really have any plan in mind for Colmar. I wanted to visit Petite Venice but I didn't really 'want' to see anything else. The very centre of Colmar was very tourist-oriented - there were people waving petitions for the blind and deaf, a petite train and tourists everywhere. We immediately tried to find some space - it wasn't too difficult, because the main drag in Colmar is a fair bit wider than some of the other tourist places I've been, like Venice and Strasbourg for instance.

We ended up at this really nice square, which is bordered by a church of sorts. There were flowerbeds and typical old French buildings all around it:

Square in Colmar

After some more wandering we found our way to Petite Venice. It's a smaller version of what you see in Strasbourg, with narrower canals and narrower walkways. Still very pretty though:

Petite Venice

With not much left to see we wandered back to the car again. I got us some meringues on the way, they seem to be a thing in Alsace. Blueberry, lemon and this weird local flavour were the orders of the day.

Some of the other photos from Colmar

We returned the long way, going over the Rhine. We stopped to watch a container ship go from the lower level to the upper level of a lock. It was amazingly fast, given that it had to travel up such a distance. Here the bridge of the ship even automatically lowers down so it can fit under the gap:

A ship in one of the Rhine's many locks

We got back in the car and journeyed back to Strasbourg just in time - a thunderstorm started to roll in. By the time we got back to Strasbourg it was dry though. Tomorrow we'll head to Illange, which will be our base for two days while we explore Luxembourg. Until then!

...And again!

Great news on both fronts today! The weather was clearer and the markets were gone. High time to go back into Strasbourg's old town and Petite France.

Day 2 of Strasbourg has now been added to the Flickr set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646084701283/

Today's plan was to do a bit more walking than yesterday. We also wanted to go to the Orangerie, which is a garden and park to the north of the centre of town.

We started off with much the same route as yesterday, taking similar photos (but not exactly the same) with a blue sky as the backdrop. The photos turned out much nicer today than yesterday, in my personal opinion:

Old-town Strasbourg in the sunshine

After originally thinking we might get the tram to the Orangerie, we decided to walk it instead, going down a couple of nice-looking streets in the process. The Orangerie turned out to be the park that all the locals go to to enjoy themselves, relax, or even go for a kayak on the lake:

Best from the Orangerie

Dad convinced me afterwards that we should walk back to the apartment, rather than getting the tram back instead. It was going to be a fairly long haul, past what I thought would be mostly the bland part of Strasbourg. That was mostly true, but it was late afternoon by this stage, the whole area looked pretty nice:

The walk back to the apartment

We went via the train station, which is famous for its bubble around the front. It was pretty nice on the outside, but as we were about to leave some seriously mean French army officers walked past carrying automatic weapons:

Offend them if you dare

We had decided that we would eat out tonight. I'd found a couple of local specialties, and a couple of decent restaurants. The first one we went to was closed for a 'summer holiday' of sorts, so we backtracked to a smaller one that looked like one the locals went to. The two dishes we had were 'Flammkuchen', a flat, onion-cream based pizza, and 'choucroute', a combination of local meats and sauerkraut. Hey TM, now we have something to call our Monday lunch!

Tomorrow we'll be heading to Colmar hopefully, which will be the last of our three days in Strasbourg. See you tomorrow!