Canton de Mersch

Wow, what a fantastic day. I talked Jody into getting up early, so we were on our bikes and off around 8.30am. As it was Sunday, nothing was open and there weren’t many people around. We headed off by the river and ended up seeing the old city walls, and a really cool castle on the river. We took some pics, and were really enjoying the scenery. Well I was, Jody was enjoying falling off her bike again – down a slippery rocky path. Hmm, yep she is ok but a bit bruised, and yep I might have laughed a bit again after checking she was ok. Good that she had her helmet on this time, and I do keep reminding her not to jump up kerbs (bet she is getting sick of that!).

After riding for a bit, I needed to go to the toilet and couldn’t find one handy so ended up biking back to the camping ground for it – possibly haven’t mentioned how wonderfully close this is to the centre. Then we thought we would see if the information centre was open, but got distracted by a patisserie that was open (of course this had a toilet in it). I hadn’t had breakfast, so had 2 items which were really nice (and decadent). We also had a hot drink each – it was only 4 degrees when we set off. We went inside the cathedral which had a service on. The stained glass windows were pretty incredible. Then the tourism office was very helpful, so we went off on our bikes again and found a really cute part of the town – first a garden with fountains, and then a intersection of several rivers where there was cycleways, areas for walking dogs, and water sports going on. We watched these for a while, but as it was getting close to midday, we then biked back to Nico and checked out.

Our next stop was the Pompidou-Metz which was a contemporary art museum. Parking was a bit of fun, but we found a place with 3 adjoining parks, so I tried my best to parallel park Nico. It would have been a bit easier without the extra meter of bikes on the back (we finally did some washing, so this was hung up in the garage). The museum was really interesting. The bottom level was a colour exhibition which had some very cool things – a video of a guy fully painting a room he was in, and going out the door. That was red for Monday, then the video showed him painting orange for Tuesday etc. The 2nd floor was of a Korean artist which was very unusual – ie one exhibit was just a medium sized rock in the middle of a room. It cost 7 euro to enter, and we haven’t done many museums (ie 1, the museum of illusions in Vienna) so this was worth the visit. Then we headed off for Luxemburg which was about an hours drive.

The camp ground in Luxemburg took a while to check in as they had a problem with some of their pitches being wet, but it is a very nice campground. We had a wee rest for an hour or so – Jody has me addicted to a game called Woody, but I finally called an end to our game playing and we were off. Catching the bus was very easy and they have a bus route sort of like train routes in other cities. It took 15 minutes to get into the City, and we found the tourism centre relatively easy and there was a very nice young man there who talked us through a map. We then set off walking and found some amazing sights. The old part is still mainly there, and it is just so much higher than the valley going through the middle. There is a balcony running for quite a long way that you can walk around over the valley below. My pics will tell the story better. So we walked around the balcony, and then back to where we started from where we knew there was a toilet and some food. Jody had a Gyro pita for dinner, and I had potato spiral on a stick and a chocolate dipped raspberry skewer. Then being fortified I said we had to walk down into the valley to check out a garden that I had seen. We walked about halfway down, and it was just lovely with the most incredible trees and views. The bridge was amazing, you could walk or ride over it, and also walk/ride under it on a special path. We spent a while there admiring the views. We also noticed the planes flying over a church in the distance, so started trying to get the best pic of that. Then it was time for a final snack – cream and strawberries on a waffle which we shared – and then on the bus again. The bus was just so easy to catch from the campsite. We left about 5pm, and got back at 9pm when it was still light. Had another game of 500 with a couple of drinkies, and looking forward to a slightly easier day tomorrow cos today seemed fairly full on!

Oh and the weather started off pretty cool, around 4 degrees and getting up to 10 while we were biking in Metz. But Luxemburg was really nice though maybe only around 15 degrees. It was lovely that it was fine and we didn’t have to take raincoats for a change.Read more