Europe Trip - Day 5 (15-Sept-2012)

Day 5 : Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Luxembourg was one place that always fascinated me. From what I have read, it is a small and beautiful country which if much like Bangalore, is an abode for retired people. I remember my father -who worked in Milan for while in the early 90s -mentioning something on similar lines about Luxembourg. And more recently some of my friends who returned from Europe also reinforced this. So I always wanted to visit Luxembourg and once we decided to stay with our friends Ram and Sneha in Brussels it was only logical for us to add Luxembourg to our list of places to visit. Since Luxembourg was a good 250 Km drive from Brussels we had to do it today as tomorrow, a unique experience in the form of “No Automobile Day” would be greeting us.

After a quick breakfast we were all set to leave around 10 am. The drive was almost perfect. The sun was out. It was neither too hot nor too cold. We were sitting in a nice, long and wide Audi car. I have personally seen many of those crawling in Bangalore traffic. But here Ram was driving it at a steady speed of 140kmph or thereabout. And for once I felt the comfort of the roads of the west. We were cruising and just as I was thinking “This is damn good”, I saw a large signboard at a distance flashing something. It was displaying something in French. It read “Prudence, Risque du file”. Well although I have no knowledge of French, but an educated guess told me “Risque” could mean something like “chance” and “file” could be “queue”. Putting that into perspective, I went “Oh-o” in my mind. Is there some road block or a traffic diversion or an accident? I knew somewhere down the line we have to slow down. And to just to prove me correct it happened. Ram braked to bring his Audi to a more familiar speed of 40kmph. And for another 4-5km we were at this pace. Unfortunately one of the lanes on the highway was close down for repair work. “Prudence Risque du files” – That’s what it was cautioning. I will never forget that. Through our journey I kept a keen eye for that catch phrase. It came up another couple of times before the lanes became normal.

After a drive of about 2 hours we stopped over for a quick lunch at one of the many highway restaurants named “Autogrill”. I got off the car and rushed to the nearest restroom only to find I needed to pay 0.5 euro to buy a ticket. Penny wise pound foolish that we are at that point of time I calculated the exchange rate and thought for a moment “70 Indian rupees for using the toilet!!! I can eat 2 simple meals with that”. I realized when I flipped the ticket around, that it can be redeemed against the food bill in the food court. For lunch, we had a veggie burger (without bread) and the most sinful Strawberry Tart cake.

Gella Fra

The break came at about the right time for us as Luxembourg City was just around 50kms away. We pulled in the parking lot at the City center and quickly headed out towards the first place of interest – Gella Fra. Standing for “Golden Lady”, it is a 21 meter high obelisk atop which stands a woman holding out a crown of laurels to two soldiers, one of whom watches over his compatriot who died in battle. Thus, the Gella Fra is dedicated to the soldiers who died in battle during the two World Wars and symbolizes peace and patriotism.

"Soldier watching his dead compatriot"

A bit of disappointment followed when we learnt of the attractions of Luxembourg, the caves and The Grand Ducal Palace were closed for various operational reasons. The caves were used as bomb shelter during World War II and according to our friend Ram the visit inside it would have been a great experience. The legend as it goes is that the soldiers hid in these bomb shelters and attacked the enemies entering into the city.  

Descending the valley - rocky trail

The city center is located on a cliff with a narrow valley maybe 200ft deep. The view from the top of the valley gives us a panoramic view of the city. And one of the famous sites visible from here is the Adolphe Bridge, the longest stone arch bridge when it opened in early 20th century. We proceeded down the gorge into the valley through a marked walking trail. The trail would take us down the valley and below the Adolphe Bridge.

A view of Adolphe Bridge

Lovely well laid trail

It was by far the nicest walking trail I have seen in my life. Just a few minutes into out walk we were surrounded by dense vegetation. It was quite a bright day but once we were into the valley we felt a chill in the wind. We took the more adventurous trail walking down steep stairs carved out of rocks. We ambled our way through the trail to reach the bottom of the valley. Some parts of the trail were well laid out with a neat cycling path. We encountered several cyclist and joggers along the way from all directions. This suggested to us that the trail that was not unique and there were several other ways to come in and out of the valley. At the bottom we were a bit confused about the path to take to get back to the place where we started from.We eventually made our way up the valley to reach the other end of the bridge. So we crossed over and reached to the place we entered the trail in the first place.

View of the Bridge from the Valley

As we walked across the bridge we saw the "Petrusse Express" a toy train which will take you on a ride across the Petrusse valley.

Petrusse Express

Another thing we observed is a pay and use cycle stand at the corner of the street near the city center. Again this was something very common across Brussels especially and I believe several other European cities also have such facilities.

We were short by the amount of calories that went in as lunch by the end of the walk. I am still not sure how much we would have walked but a reasonable guess would be atleast 5 kms.

Stained Glass Windows

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

The next in the list of the places to see was the Notre Dame cathedral of Luxembourg. I must say that the interiors looked very much like the one in Paris. The stained glass windows around every wall of the cathedral could be one reason why it could have given me the sense of deja vu. We sat in there for a sometime to give our legs a bit of rest till evening prayers were just about started. We quietly walked out to and the next thing was to give our tummy its much needed attention. We walked past the city center and into a square with several eateries. We settled in a nice shade in one of the restaurants. The evening coffee which we are so accustomed to is what we yearned the most. One the way back we shopped for souvenirs, a magnet to mark every place visited.

We couldn’t see two of the most important places to see in the city but just that simple walk down the valley was good enough sample for us to give us the feel of Luxembourg. We knew that’s the best we would do in the given time. Maybe another time we would love to visit the several chateaux that are famous in Luxembourg and probably cycle through a picturesque valley all through the day. Beautiful things many times come in small packages like butterflies and definitely Luxembourg exemplifies this.

We again stopped over at a highway restaurant for dinner and reached Brussels late in the night and we knew we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow. It is off to the Venice of the North – Bruges tomorrow.

-- Yes & Why