Sunday, October 23, 2011

Going where the wind blows us

It's tough hearing the alarm on the weekend but when you're somewhere new and there's lots to explore, you can't sleep the day away. However, we both woke up fairly groggy and realized we must have had more to drink than we realized the night before. Oops.

This fuzzy state contributed to an impressive case of indecision over what to do for the day. We had lots of options we could combine for an interesting day. "I don't know, what do you want to do" was thrown out a lot at breakfast!

In the end, the hotel receptionist established that we would stay another night here as there was availability. Okay-cool. We've come a long way, sounds like a good idea.

The guy at the tourist information office's reaction to some of the towns Stephane had suggested we visit helped us narrow down the day's itinerary to include Vianden and Echternach. Simple. Great. Let's go.

It's amazing how close everything here is. On the map, Vianden was a fair distance away. In reality we were there before we knew it. Many of the towns we've seen here are set up in the same way, fortress on the top of the hill where the river bends sharply around and the town gets built up. It works! It creates the most 'gezellig' little towns and Vianden made a great first impression as we drove down into the valley.

Jocelyn parked Gigi at the castle and before going in, we went into the forest for a hike en-route to finding a geocache we never found.  Still, our attempt fulfilled the purpose - going and exploring somewhere we otherwise wouldn't have.  It was a gorgeous day too so I was happy just to wander.

The castle was beautiful and well preserved.  I was most struck by the 2 level chapel.  The servants and those who weren't meant to be seen (!) would gather in the basement below an opening in the floor on the main level so they could hear the service.  I've never seen that before.  The Byzantine Gallery was also quite stunning!

Next was Echternacht which was a lovely little town.  The antique market we saw there was the exact same one we'd seen the day before in Luxembourg city.  I recognized the gramophones and the french horn out of the pile of tea cups, fur coats and old paintings.

Back in Luxembourg for the night.  We wandered around and found a nice little Indian restaurant and then headed back to the hotel for a moderately early night which we both wanted.

Quote of the day: Hey...WE're women! (said when realizing that we could use the reserved parking spots near the door. A great initiative by the Luxembourgians to minimize the distance women need to walk on their own in a parkade at night.)


Hills and history...

Breakfast with the seniors at Floreal. Typical continental breakfast where I seem to always indulge in the pack of chocolate-hazelnut spread!

We walked around the property a bit before leaving. It would be a great place to take a family for a couple of weeks in the summer. We needed to bundle up though - it's cold! Maybe I don't want to go back to Canada in the winter after all. I've gotten soft!

We went into town to wander around although it's clear that the town thrives on summer business. Less than half of the shops were open but we managed to find a place for a cup of coffee (2.20€).

Then we went on a wander to find the castle entrance. We failed! With all the twisty, windy roads we thought we were on the right track and then we appeared to be getting further away again. Sigh! Well, at least we managed to explore some more of the town and we were happy to admire it from afar.


We were ready to start the next part of the adventure around noon. We programmed the TomTom to avoid motorways and stuck to pretty side roads on our journey south traversing Luxembourg from north to south. We grooved in Gigi to several great road-trip songs while she got checked out by several other drivers. A green '92 Mini-Cooper gets noticed!

Both of us have obviously spent a long time in the Netherlands. Our jaws were dropped while driving through the countryside. 'Look! A hill!'. 'Wow, what a gorgeous valley!' It was such a pretty drive, especially with the fall colours.

Luxembourg City is surprisingly small. It's really nice though and a pleasant surprise. We checked in to our funky, artsy hotel and then hit the Centrum before the shops closed. We managed to do some damage at the shops in a short time and I bought a great dress for Argentina.

Stephane met us at the hotel around 5:30 and gave us quite the city tour. We learned all about the history from the 10th century until now. Lots of passing the territory backhand forth, details on the history of the Dukes - starting with Guillaume II, the somethingth king of the Netherlands was made after the battle of Waterloo in about 1815 when they revisited the powers of Europe. (sidenote: I'm not sure that info was correctly interpreted by me-I was mostly interested in snapping photos and may have misheard)

Dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant, a wander down past the abbey we could see from the Cornice walk, an excursion through some dark corners to meet up with the path along the river to a brewery that reminded me of the Barley Mill in Calgary. It was a great walk that J and I simply wouldn't have found without Stephane as our tour guide. We hit a brewery and a piano bar and interestingly enough it didn't feel so cold on the walk back to the hotel!

Word of the day: swissish (Stephane)
Phrase of the day: I want to marry you. (Laurent-the-Luxemburgian)

Memory serves

I made it back to La Roche en Ardennes and my fuzzy memory from1999 was accurate. This place is GORGEOUS!

I passed through here en route to Nadrin, the small town where our Shell basic training course was taking place years ago, the morning after a night of trying to sleep on a sticky train station bench in Liege. Even through an early morning fog, this town's landscape etched a place in my mind. A mental bookmark to try to come back and explore it some more.

So here I am, 12 years later (wow!). Jocelyn and I left The Hague around 18h30 Friday after work and 4 hours later we pulled into town and we both oohed and ahhed at the same time as the big castle on the hill came into sight. This town is going to be fun to explore in the morning.

Some parts are obviously original and old but there's been an evident splash of money in town and Jocelyn remarked on the similarities with a resort town like Whistler. Too true.

Our hotel, Le Floreal is quite the impressive building and for 40€ PP/PN including breakfast, it's a deal. I get to use my French here which is always fun though moreso now that I've noticed Dutch words bubble up into my brain.

Quote of the day: "boy those seniors can sure boogie to that polka music!"