Luxembourg

Travelling day today, and time to leave Belgium. Up quite early as we had to get our rental car back to the depot near the station by 9am, and then a 9:15am train. Left the hotel at 8:30, drove the five minutes to the station, then spent 10 minutes waiting for another customer to get sorted out which was a bit frustrating! In the end the worker was happy with the car, and off we went.

Surprisingly long walk to the station since it looked like it was "right there", but there was a bunch of construction work (not) happening, and we had to take the long way round. But we still made it with plenty of time to spare which was nice. Train for 90 minutes to a city in Belgium's south-east called Namur, where we grabbed a quick sandwich at the Panos chain and then hopped on a connecting train to Luxembourg for another 2 hours.

Considering Luxembourg is known for being a micro-nation, it's actually surprisingly large. It's only seventh smallest in Europe (Vatican, Monaco, San Marino, Lichtenstein, Andorra, and Malta are all smaller in that order), and at 2500sqkm it's about the same size as Hong Kong. So there's plenty of farmland and smaller towns dotted around, though the capital city and main town, Luxembourg City, is obviously the dominating place.

We arrived into the station around 1pm and walked about 10 minutes down the main boulevard to our hotel. The area around the station (creatively known as Gare) wasn't that nice or interesting, though as we got further from the station it got nicer. Our hotel is OK, a little tired and small but it'll be adequate for two nights.

After a brief rest we headed out into the city for a proper late lunch. I found a spot on Foursquare called "Charles Sandwiches" which did apparently the best sandwiches in town. And, well, they were pretty good! I had a Philly Cheesesteak which is strips of tender beef with melted cheese, capsicum and onions. By now it was around 3pm, so it was a very late lunch!

We wandered around some more, eventually making it to the older part of town which was much more interesting. It's surprising to find that Luxembourg is actually an old hilltop fortress town, and through most of it's thousand-year history it's been strategically important and heavily fortified. Although a lot of the defences were dismantled in the 1850s or so, plenty of it still remains and it's cool to wander around and check it out.

Eventually we just found a cafe and grabbed a beer to relax, neither of us felt like filming or taking photos particularly since it was quite overcast and nice weather was supposedly incoming for tomorrow. Eventually we just wandered back to the hotel and stayed in for the evening, though I ventured out late in the day for a snack - only to discover that literally everywhere closes on a Sunday in Luxembourg! In the end I found a chain coffee shop that couldn't sell me any hot food since their machines were switched off (they were about to close), so I had a blueberry muffin instead. Healthy dinner!Read more