Week 18: Luxembourg

Another week gone by! Nothing interesting really happened during the week; we’re into a routine now: Work, school, German classes. The only bit of excitement is that Alli is getting married in October! So, we will get to come back twice now to celebrate and cannot wait!

The kids have definitely gotten the school routine down. A week or two ago, they told us to stop walking them to the bus stop- too embarrassing. But, we had been getting up with them to make sure they leave the house on time, even though they have been good about waking themselves up, getting dressed and eating breakfast. One day this week, Matt and I overslept and panicked only to find the kids heading out the door on their own. It’s a good thing they still need us for money, or they wouldn’t need us for anything anymore.

This weekend we did a driving trip. The main destination was Luxembourg, but we decided to make stops at Ramstein Air Base and Trier.

Ramstein is one of the biggest bases in Europe, with a huge Px, food court, and even sit-down restaurants. Since we were going to be passing it, we decided to check it out. ‘Wow!’ is all I can say. I thought our Px and base were big but it doesn’t compare to Ramstein. Its Px was the size of an American mall; it had tons of stores and just went on forever. We hadn’t had Chinese food in forever so picked up some PF Changs and ate overlooking the runway. We will definitely be back a lot for the shopping as much as possible.

Our next stop was Trier, a German city in the Moselle River Valley. The Moselle Valley is like the mini Rhine River; lots of picturesque towns, villages, and medieval castles surrounded by vineyards. We were only driving through but it was definitely so beautiful and will warrant it’s own trip one day.

Trier was founded by the Celts in the 400s and is considered to be the oldest city in Germany. That is just nuts to me. By the time the city was conquered by the Romans in the 700s, the city was already 300 years old. More recently, it has spent the last 400 years being fought over during various wars, including being bombed during WWII, and has been gone back and forth as a part of France, Prussia, and Germany. Somehow, the old Roman gate of the city still stands.

During our visit, there was some kind of festival going on in the town so it was packed with people. There was live entertainment and lots of games and fest stalls. We stopped for drinks in a cafe by the gate and then walked around for some shopping.

We had planned on the stop being short but we kept being stopped by people who wanted to talk about our dogs, which honestly, we loved. We met lots of Americans, some Canadians, and some Germans.

After our stop in Trier, we finished the drive to Luxembourg City. After we got checked into the hotel, we went downtown to walk around and grab some dinner. The city itself looks really French and was so cute. It was really clean and everything is in a good walking distance. Our picky eaters chose Kebabs and McDonald’s for dinner. We ate in one of the main squares and then headed back to the hotel.

The Pont Adolph. If you zoom in, you can see people walking across a second pedestrian bridge that is suspended from the upper.

All the trash cans have these faces painted on them that the dogs had to bark at.

Sunday morning, we got up early to do some more exploring. This time we walked around the Old Town. The city really is beautiful, built across two ridges, with a gorge in between. The views from the Corniche looked like a postcard.

Views of the Old Town in the gorge from the Corniche

We found the Ducal Palace, where the Grand Duke and Duchess live (there is no king and queen here) and caught their changing of the guard, which was so boring compared to some others. In their defense, there are only two guards at a time and only one swaps out every so often.

Not the most interesting Changing of the Guard

The Grand Ducal Palace, walking up from the square.

Before getting back into the car, we stopped for a coffee in a cafe. Our dogs are normally decently behaved unless they see other dogs, they go absolutely crazy and they had been driving us nuts all morning with the number of dogs in Luxembourg City. While sitting in the cafe, we looked down to see Slinky sneaking away as he has chewed through his leash and was after another dog. Slinky isn’t normally the smartest dog so I can’t believe he even had the idea. We had to tie a knot in his leash to get him back to the car.