Luxembourg City (Wednesday 20th September 2017)

Dear readers, apologies for no blog entry to read over your cornflakes yesterday. We arrived home very late from our trip to Luxembourg so you wouldn’t have got it until after breakfast, anyway. Bed was much more appealing. Anyway, here’s the story about the adventures of the day.

GPS-girl told us the trip to Luxembourg will take 69 minutes. Apart from a small section of road just a few kilometres long and the bit from Traben-Trarbach beside the Mosel to the start of the autobahn the whole trip was freeway all the way. Great! That’ll be easy! Let’s stop at the old town of Trier along the way to get some Roman history. So, off we went.

 

After the climb up the will we began to approach the town of Wittlich, where the autobahn began. Bugger, the turn-off to Trier was blocked. Never mind, GPS-girl will work out another way. So we followed her instructions for 10kms until we wound at the same place! Just like in Montpelier four years ago. We reset her to not use the autobahn and off we went in a different direction. Yippee! Then, through no fault of GPS-girl the secondary road to Trier was blocked also. Bugger Trier , we’ll go straight to Luxembourg! Boy did that take us on some German goat-tracks! I didn’t think Germany had roads like these ones. Now I understand why one of the planks in Angela Merkel’s re-election platform is “to get the roads back to the way they used to be”. BTW, the German elections are on September 24^th. Every second lamppost across the whole of the Country has a sign supporting one or another of the local candidates and the party leader. Angela is expected to get back in but with a reduced majority.

Eventually we emerged from the dark woods and found a sign to Trier so thought, since it’s only 17kms away we’d check it out anyway. At least we’ll be able to get on the autobahn there. Wrong! The exit from the entrance to the autobahn in the direction of Luxembourg was blocked also. What sort a conspiracy is going on here! So we trundled through Trier, a very large city, trundled through other road works, trundled through other little villages further up the Mosel until, finally, just 25kms from Luxembourg City we hit the autobahn again and were allowed onto it. I don’t even know what time we got to Luxembourg City, but I do know the whole trip took about three times longer that 69 minutes!

 

 

In Luxembourg City we parked the car outside the restaurant at which we we going to dine and walked into the city centre, via the first bar we could find for a well deserved coffee. My French is very poor but I know enough to understand that the sign pointing to Ville Haute would take us to where we wanted to go. We were, in fact in Ville Basse. Luxembourg City is a real surprise. The central streets and lanes of the old city are separated into two distinct parts because of the immense erosion created but the River Alzette that flows around and through it. Ville Haute is high above the stream standing atop massive cliffs on either side of its streets. Ville Basse is stream-side. It’s a quite stunning setting.

 

 

 

After the coffee we followed the sign to Ville Haute though a tunnel which cam to an abrupt end at an elevator. Thirty seconds later we were in Ville Haute. How civilised! We wandered over to the other side of the escarpment for some more splendid views of period buildings, lovely manicured gardens, a massive Luxembourg flag and ancient bridges that connected Ville Haute to the rest of the city. Into the lane-ways we ventured from there to find the busy shopping district. We passed countless up-market stores such as Cartier, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Gucci to name but a few. We were headed to Pandora, of course. New city, new charm for the bracelet! As there was nothing that represented Luxembourg on offer Kerry selected a little boat to reminder her of the cruises on the Rhine and the Mosel. We found a store that sold frozen yoghurt and then headed off to our rendezvous with my old friend, Tim De Buyser, at the restaurant. We walked back to the car via different route which offered more stunning views of the old city. A couple of young lads helped a couple of geographically uncertain tourists (we weren’t lost; I’ve never been lost!) find their way back across the river to the car.

Tim was right on time for our 16:30 appointment, as he had always been during his tenure as my IBM Storage account rep from 2015-17. We headed to a bar for a couple of drinks then back to the Italian restaurant, Restaurant Notaro, for dinner. The restaurant was splendid, the service was splendid, the meal was splendid, the wine was splendid and, most importantly, the company was splendid. We had a beautiful antipasto and a delicious plate of mussels for entrée followed by spaghetti with lobster (crack it open yourself and mix it in) for Tim, a proper spaghetti carbornara for Kerry and grilled calamari for me. We talked endlessly from 5:00pm until 10:00pm, not just about work things, but a whole range of topics, even about how the AFL finals were unfolding.

Our Au Revoir’s said with a man-hug, we agreed that with luck fate would see our paths cross once again. It was splendid end to the day.