Luxembourg

Luxembourg (the city and the country) is just a stone's throw away from Trier. When we were planning for this week-long trip, we decided that we would make a detour to Luxembourg on our way back to Karlsruhe. We are glad that we did.

Traveling within the EU is really a joy. Here you see we are crossing the Luxembourg border on the Autobahn. There was no immigration and customs to deal with.

Luxembourg is a small country - less than half a million people living in a land of less than 15% of the San Francsico Bay Area. But the cost of living appeared to be very high to us. After we parked the car near Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Luxembourg city, we walked to the nearby town center for lunch. Most of the open air cafes were open, but the prices were high; 30+€ for a prix fixe was not unusual. We ended up at the Golden Arches instead, but it was still 20+% more expensive than in Germany.

We walked around the Ville Haute, the "high city" where the old town core is, after lunch. The picture on the left below shows part of the the Casemates Bock, which is a network of underground fortifications. Unfortunately we could not get inside to navigate as it had been under renovation for many months.


But the view of Ville Basse (the "low city") from above is gorgeous:


After a short break at a pastry cafe across the Grand Ducal Palace (and we watched the changing of the guard in front of this parliament building), we wanted to drive down to Ville Basse for a tour. We did have an interesting tour as our GPS had a difficult time pinning down our location. It was not really a reception problem; the device could not differentiate the windy roads at different altitude well when we were driving down the hills.

Our drive back along a scenic route was enjoyable. We cut through two natural parks (Saar-Hünsruck and Pfälzer Wald), then along the "wine alley" after passing through Pfälzer Wald: