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Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Luxembourg: pretty, not too huge yet vast (hard to get to all the great places on foot – you need to take a little train or a tour bus to see all the interesting sites) and very multicultural (for European standards). Once again, we did a lot of fun meandering, snapped pics and eventually bumped into the mini-train tour and jumped onto that. Good move – very interesting audio-guided tour. It gave us an excellent breakdown of the history of Luxembourg, also called the “Gibraltar of the North” because it is considered to have been the most highly fortified place after the Rock. Luxembourg is pretty for a place that has been destroyed and taken over by numerous hostile countries during its existence. The resilience of the place, once you hear about its history, is nothing short of incredible. The train ride also allowed us to go down into the “valley” into beautiful old suburbs like Clausen. Gorgeous old houses, bridges and waterways are down there. You also get a great view of all the amazing structures which were built right into the looming rocks above. Both majestic and awesome. We also spent a good chunk of time making Schleck jokes. For the non-Tour de France people, Andy and Frank Schleck are two brothers who took part in the tour this year and both placed very well. Frank even held the yellow jersey for a good chunk of the Tour. The jokes were “lovingly” meant because I think I can safely say that we’ve both become fans of theirs. Me especially (they’re pretty cute! -this is Elke blogging, by the way ;)) – not as cute as Mitch, of course, but still cute and they’ve definitely done Luxembourg proud.

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