We stayed at the Hotel Simoncini. I mention this because of art gallery next door which you could enter either from outside or the hotel itself with some of their works were exhibited throughout the hotel. It was good and the staff was good, also the breakfast but let me digress back to the actual city.
We were a good walk from the station but on the verge of the shopping centre. At one stage a parade walked down the middle of the shopping centre, we knew they were there as we could hear their lovely music. Popping open the window we leaned over to look down to watch. They were parading down to the Monument du Souvenir for a festival, it was so nice to be able to wander through this festival. I couldn’t eat any of their food due to my allergies so contented myself with just the sight and the smell.
So many different levels in Luxembourg and so many breathtaking views. This photo really doesn’t do it justice. What you can see in the background between the two sets of trees is a bridge, it’s lower than the road we’re on.
And this next photo gives a random example of the different heights of the roads. I was standing on one road and you can see the cars on the left going up, the car in the middle on a different level with the road on the right heading more or less flat with where I was standing. All three roads joined up roughly where I was standing.
At one point we decided to take the stairs up rather than going round the long way. There were only 109 steps, I counted. On the way up we saw some fruit trees which looked well cared for, I didn’t take photos of them. I presume someone harvests the fruit for us.
Luxembourg does have some history in Roman times but it is considered to have started properly in 963 and this shows in some of the buildings and bridges. I’m not sure of the age of some of the structures are in the photos above but they do look pretty old.
Our first night in Luxembourg was pretty exciting. Wandering around looking for somewhere to eat we found a place that looked promising only to be told the kitchen has shut. That gave me food for thought as it wasn’t terribly late. We then found several other places and chose to eat inside one of them. We were seated pretty quickly but the service after that deteriorated and with exceedingly good reason.
Our first hint was when one of the servers put an umbrella over the cash register sitting outside. This didn’t last long thanks to the wind and he brought the whole cash register inside, it looked a little wet. It only took a few more seconds before it was all hands on deck to move everything inside. They did this in stages as some diners felt they were okay outside under the awnings but eventually everyone was persuaded to come inside. There was so much water that the awnings had to be rolled back carefully and in stages and once they were away it meant the staff then got absolutely soaked grabbing the last few things. One clever man tried to use an umbrella but that wasn’t terribly successful. We left with reluctance, the meal was wonderful but the hotel room was beckoning. The rain had lifted a little by this time so we made a dash over the 200 odd metres and got wet.
Other things we did there besides lots of walking up and down hills:
- walked around the front of the Ducal Palace and watched the two man guard
- walked down the Grand Rue which is about the width of an average side street back home
- walked around a team of men using a crane to build another crane. This is notable. Back home the entire street would have been blocked off, in Luxembourg they trusted people to be sensible
- found the Synagogue and didn’t go inside
- took the bus to the European quarter, except the bus was going the wrong way so we saw lots of Luxembourg by bus. Stayed on it till the end of the line, then wandered outside for the 10 minutes until the driver took off again with us on it
- found the EU Court of Justice, the EU Parliament
- took a tram back
Don’t talk about the pastries. However did I lose weight while eating so many strikingly delicious pastries?