Luxembourg

Em and I only had a couple days left on our Eurail Global Pass so we decided to use Wednesday to go out to see one more area out of Mom and Loel’s mission. We decided on Luxembourg. We didn’t know too much about it but we had heard it was a neat place. Mom and Loel dropped us off at the train station where we said goodbye to Mike and Tiffany and took the train to Luxembourg.
It was a pretty neat city. Even though it spoke mostly French and it is such a tiny country (I think it’s width is a little over 10 miles) it definitely felt like its own unique place. We only had about 8 hours there so we walked around the city and found a bike shop to get bikes for the day. One of the coolest parts of the city is a lush green valley that goes throughout the city. All the buildings and streets are on the main level but running throughout the town is a valley with a river running through it and lots of trees and parks. Also, near the center is a picturesque castle/church that can be seen from pretty much everywhere.

We thought we were doing a 10 to 12 kilometer bike ride (self guided, we got directions before we left) but it turned out to be a little over 26 kilometers! (about 17 or 18 miles). It was definitely the hardest bike ride we had been on yet but still completely doable. It took us through the city and around the country side. We passed along pretty striking hay fields (where all you could see was hay for miles) and corn fields.

The last 8 miles or so was mostly shaded and went along a river passing through a couple small villages. We were pretty tired by the end but we both enjoyed the workout and great scenery.
After our ride we decided we deserved a cold treat and luckily we stumbled upon Gelato! And I am glad we did as it was the cheapest Gelato we have had thus far (lots of things in Luxembourg were cheaper than most places, not sure why as it is per capita the richest country on earth) and our favorite. It was very similar to the ‘best gelato in Rome’ we had earlier but we got much better flavors than we had gotten at the Rome one. Because it was so good, we went back for seconds…

As we were walking back to the train station it started getting really windy. We liked it because it cooled us off – not knowing that eventually it would turn into a huge windstorm uprooting many trees. On our train ride back to Brussels we ended up getting delayed about 2 hours because the huge windstorm blew trees over onto the tracks. As we were stopped, we looked out the window and an entire roof of a barn was off, many trees where snapped in half, and a powerline was on top of a crushed car. Luckily, a very nice man (we we became friends with) let us call Mom and Loel so they wouldn’t have to wait at the station all night. We eventually made it home around midnight.