Arrive in Luxembourg

Trip Start May 14, 2008
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Trip End May 30, 2008

Flag of Luxembourg  ,
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

On Tuesday morning, we took the train from Paris to Luxembourg City.  Luxembourg City is a very small, very beautiful town.  Everything is within walking distance.  There are tall stone walls that separate the town which is on the top of the cliff to the valleys below.  In the largest valley there is a stream with some great walking trails.  We stayed at the Mercure hotel across from the train station.  It was a very nice hotel and the last hotel on our journey.  From here on out we are in hostels.

We walked around Luxembourg and saw just about all of the local attractions.  We went into the Notre Dame Cathedral which is much smaller than the Notre Dame in Paris but has very beautiful stained glass windows.

We then walked over to two of the plazas.  We first went to the plaza near the Grand Ducal Palace and then we walked over to see the Palace.  There was one guard keeping watch out front Casements
Casements
 .   The second plaza was the Place dŽArmes which is an open square with a lot of restaurants and cafes.  We ended up eating dinner in this plaza later in the day.

Luxembourg has a lot of history dating back to 963AD when they first started building fortifications around the city to protect it from outsiders.  There are some old remaining stone forts and several miles of underground tunnels remaining that were used over the centuries during the wars.  These are called the casements.  We explored the casements and saw some the old tunnels that were used during the wars and saw some old cannons. Most of the tunnels have openings that overlook the lower suburbs of Grund.  There were some tunnels that went well below the surface of the earth.  As you descend down into these tunnels by walking down narrow spiral staircases the air gets colder and you can see moss growing on the walls.

After the casements we took an elevator down into the lower suburb of Grund which  was very cute with narrow winding streets.

After that we walked around the rest of the town, which only took about another hour, then grabbed dinner.   By that point we had seen everything, and some things twice.

All in all, we enjoyed our time here.  Luxembourg is a very prosperous small town.  We small more cafes and pastry shops here than we did in Paris.  There were a lot of business people in suits.  And most of the cabs we saw were Mercedes or BMWs.  Everyone was very friendly and most people spoke almost perfect English.  Though the native language sounds like a mixture of French and German.
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