Europe,  Travel

A Day in Luxembourg City

January 22, 2017 /

In my New Year’s post, I mentioned briefly that I visited a new country in December!  I visited Luxembourg City. Luxembourg is the small country at the intersection of France, Belgium, and Germany’s borders.  The country is only 2,586 sq km!  I was curious about the size ranking so I looked it up and apparently Luxembourg is only the 28th smallest country!  I thought it would be higher on the list.

Anywho, I went to Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg, with my momma in tow.  This was one of the stops we made on our little Christmas week voyage.  I partially chose the city just to break up one of our longer train rides.  But also, neither of us visited Luxembourg before!

Upon arrival, I was a bit caught off guard because the train station only had maps of the country and not of the city!  They also didn’t have any tourist info booth, just booths for booking bus tickets etc.  We decided to take a cab into center city to save us the hike.

*Important snippet of information: Luxembourg does not have Uber!*  

I had grown accustomed to ordering Uber cars in France and Belgium, and I just assumed that Luxembourg would also have this option.  That is not the case!

The cab driver dropped us off close to the Tourist Office and gave us directions to the building.  I will say that the young man working in the tourist office was one of the least enthusiastic tourism employees I’ve ever encountered.  If I’m not staying in a hostel, I usually like to start off at the tourist office.  Not only do they have free maps, they also usually give great advice on must-sees or things to avoid.  This man basically just stared at me and gave me a map.  But hey, we can’t always win!  Luckily the map had a suggested walking path, with excerpts about the various attractions.

Luxembourg City is rather small, so walking was definitely the best way to explore for my mom and me.  This was an especially frigid day, so in between lunch and dinner we grabbed some hot wine to heat up.  (Really any excuse for vin chaud!)  My mom and I used the walking path as a starting point, but took our own detours.  Unfortunately Pont Adolphe was under construction during our visit.  However, there were still tons of other beautiful sites to see while walking around the city.  One of my favorites was William Square.  There was a market with food and flowers!  I always love to feel immersed with the locals, and local markets are the perfect place for that.  Plus, my mom has a green thumb and she loved seeing the various holiday arrangements they were selling.

Luxembourg City | Adventures with Shelby

For the most part, we just weaved around the City Centre.  Most of the highlights of the city are in the center, and we had to head back to the train station by dinnertime.  Luxembourg City is kind of squished together in between the deep Petrusse Valley (over which the Adolphe Bridge crosses) and the skinny, winding Alzette River.  At the foot of the City Centre, the Grund neighborhood is across the Alzette forming a near peninsular shape.

The Grund is what I pictured when I thought of Luxembourg City based on the photos I had seen.  It is an adorable medieval style neighborhood with beautiful homes lining the water.  Following the chemin de la Corniche, we came across an amazing view.  La Corniche is described as being “the most beautiful balcony of Europe” with one of the coveted views over the Grund neighborhood.  This view was spectacular to the say the least.  However, due to a few areas of construction to the left of the balcony area I actually preferred a different overlook!

After continuing to wrap around the edge of the City Centre along the Alzette River, eventually we ran into the fascinating Bock Promontory.  This connects to the city with the castle bridge.  These are the remains of the first stronghold in Luxembourg.  This was the view that really stunned me.  As we approached from the City Centre, we were immediately struck by the view.   However, crossing the bridge made the panorama expand to provide an even wider view!  Even with the frigid weather, my mom and I spent nearly half an hour just taking in the view.

Places des Armes had a big Christmas Market for the holidays.  It was so fun to be able to show my mom this, as we don’t have these at home.  Constitution Square also had a Christmas Market surrounding the Gelle Fra Memorial while we visited.  We spent a good chunk of time here before leaving!

I have a few more posts to work on from the past month, but I also wanted to share that I have booked several trips in the coming months!  In a few weeks I will be visiting three new countries!  Details to come.  😉

 


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