Luxembourg!

So, here's the second trip of the kids' visit, but first Rüdesheim!

Rüdesheim is a cute little town fairly near Frankfurt that we've decided that we like to take visitors to. You might remember it from an earlier blog post from about a year ago (with "K"). The boss was at work, so I loaded up the kids and drove over there. We did basically a loop of the tourist area, taking in all of the little tourist shops and wine stores. We were hoping to find some of the strawberry wine that we tried there last time, but weren't able to find any - even at the tail end of strawberry season! One thing we did this time that we didn't do last time is the chairlift. There's a chairlift that takes you up to the top of a nearby hill, where the Niederwald Monument watches over the Rhine River. This monument was erected in 1871 to commemorate the unification of Germany. Quite impressive, it stands 125 feet tall, and looks down upon the town of Rüdesheim and the Rhine River. There's also a neoclassical temple up there that was erected in 1788, at the top of the chairlift. The ride up on the chairlift takes you over the vineyards overlooking the town, providing beautiful views of the countryside. Highly recommend!

We had asked Palmer where he wanted to go while he was over here, and he's got a couple of friends he plays online games with in Luxembourg and southern Belgium, so we decided to add another proverbial stamp to our passports with a quick trip to... Luxembourg!

Thursday we drove to Luxembourg - it's not actually that long of a trip... about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. When we got to the apartment that we'd rented, the key wasn't in the lock box that I was told to check. A quick call to the management company, and they gave me the code for the other box (usually used by management)... so we could get into the apartment. I went upstairs to get the control for the garage door, and went back down to pull the car into our designated garage spot.

Our apartment was a "penthouse" unit, simply meaning that it was on the top floor of the four story building. It had a wrap-around balcony, with great views from every window. Unfortunately, no "zombie shutters" though. This will come into play the next morning... and every morning after that as well.

Public transit is free in the country of Luxembourg, so we took a bus downtown and wandered around for a while. One of the wife's coworkers visits Luxembourg frequently for his job, so she had asked him for a recommendation of places to eat and tourism advice. We went to his recommended restaurant, Charles Sandwiches. Pretty good, but the wife's Caesar Salad with Salmon evidently got lost in the kitchen... by the time she got it, everyone else was done eating. Also, the salmon was raw. I'm not sure how she toughed it out - I would not have been able to choke it down, but... I honestly wouldn't have ordered salmon in the first place, so she's got no one to blame but herself.

We wandered around a while longer, and found the "most beautiful balcony in Europe." Perhaps I should step back a little bit...

Luxembourg is the richest country in the world, due in large part to its corporation friendly tax laws. The capital (and largest city), Luxembourg City, was officially founded back in the 900's, on the site of an older Roman tower. The location of the site, at the natural convergence of two rivers, was a perfect location for defensive fortifications along the cliffs overlooking the intersection of the rivers. Those fortifications stood until the late 1860's, when the fortifications had to be dismantled to comply with an international treaty... the city of Luxembourg was so well fortified that European "superpowers" at the time were concerned that they'd be unable to take the city over. They called it "Gibraltar of the North."

Luxembourg has a long and storied history... taken over by just about every country in Europe at one time or another. How that jives with the whole "Gibraltar of the North," I'll admit, I just don't get.

Anyway, while those fortifications are mostly gone, they've been transformed into a walkway along the upper city, overlooking the rivers and the Gründ (lower city) below. The walkway has been described as "The most beautiful balcony in Europe," but the person who coined that phrase was a Luxembourgish writer, so... your mileage may vary. By the way, his name was Batty Weber, so take that into account while you're weighing your answer. Beautiful? Yes. The most beautiful in Europe? I haven't seen them all, and Batty probably hadn't either.

After wandering around for a while, we took a bus back to the apartment.

Y'all might or might not know this, but this area of Europe is much further north than you'd expect. Frankfurt is about the same latitude as Winnipeg, Canada. As a result, in the summer, the sun doesn't go down until almost 11:00, and comes up bright and early at around 5:00.

Remember how I told you that there were no "zombie shutters" at the apartment? Yeah, so the sun woke us up bright and early. The rest of the family, though - they were able to go back to sleep. I, on the other hand, was up with the sun, and couldn't go back to sleep.

Once everyone else started moving around, we got dressed and took off for our first destination of the day, the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. 5,074 US Army soldiers are buried at this cemetery, most of whom lost their lives at the Ardennes Offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge. Patton's headquarters for the operation were in Luxembourg, and in accordance with his wishes, upon his death, his remains were sent to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg so he could be buried with his men.

After our sobering visit to the cemetery, we drove back into town and parked in a parking garage we found. We wandered around, and stopped in a kebab shop for a quick lunch.

After lunch, Palmer split off to meet up with the first of his friends.

The girls and I wandered around a little while longer (including a local supermarket, which we always enjoy), and then headed back to the apartment.

We didn't hear from Palmer until almost 11:00 that night... he had his cell phone with him, and while Luxembourg City has free internet, it's a pain in the butt to get it connected if you don't already have a connection. You have to register for an account, then use the PIN code that they send you via text message... which is all well and fine if you've got cell service... which he didn't. Evidently, the management company has received complaints from neighbors about their clients bugging them, so there are warnings all over the apartment, telling us not to contact the neighbors. When Palmer saw the buzzer at the front door, he wasn't sure which apartment was ours, so he didn't feel comfortable pressing any of the buttons. He wandered around until he found someone who would let him use their phone, and he called me to ask me to let him in. Evidently, he'd been wandering around the neighborhood for around an hour. I'd gone down twice to look for him, but he'd been walking around, rather than sitting waiting, so we didn't bump into each other.

That night, we put our heads together and used my telephone number and his phone to get him all set up with an account for the next day.

The next morning, we'd scheduled one of our free walking tours, and had to be there at 11:00. We left around 10:00 and drove down to "our" parking lot. Walking through the town on the way to our meeting place, we stumbled through a little open air market, and the boss fell in love with a bunch of pieces of pottery that she (thankfully) didn't want to carry around all day. Crisis averted, huh?

I stepped over to get a couple of bottles of water for our tour, and when I got back to the family, what should I see but my wife carrying a shopping bag with a watercolor picture of Paris in it. This makes the second watercolor that she's acquired in the last few weeks - she got a watercolor of Salzburg... while she was in Salzburg. Now, she's got a story about how she bought a watercolor of Paris while on vacation in Luxembourg.

Sometimes, I think she does stuff like this just to mess with me.

We met up with the group for our free tour, and turns out, the group was a lot larger than the groups we've toured with previously... there were probably 30 people in this group, and it just felt way too big. We toured over most of the areas we'd already explored, while picking up a few extra little tidbits of trivia here and there.

One of the sites we saw a couple of times (but only learned about during our tour) was a monument called Gëlle Fra, or the Monument of Remembrance. The monument was erected in 1923 in remembrance of the losses during World War I. During Nazi occupation during World War II, they dismantled the monument. After the war, the monument was reconstructed, but the golden angel on the top remained missing until 1980, when her dismantled pieces were discovered under the bleachers under the national football stadium. She has since resumed her rightful place, with additions to the monument made to honor those lost in World War II and Korea.

After our tour, we went back to the main square and found a place to get food, settling on a pizza place. Everyone else had pizza, while I had what was supposed to be focaccia, but was basically a really thin panini. After lunch, we walked over to the Luxembourg Museum of Archeology, History, and Art.

This museum is quite large, and all of the permanent exhibits are free (because... Luxembourg). We wandered through the "pre-history" areas, then explored the different floors (I wandered around a floor for a while that seemed to have a strong focus on "What do you think Baby Jesus' junk looked like?" that were painted in the 1600's and 1700's). A bit more wandering after that, and I went outside to wait for the others. Reuniting a little while later, we drove back to the apartment to recuperate for a while before dinner.

Palmer had arranged to meet friend #2 for dinner at their hotel at 7:00 (after a few schedule changes), so we drove over there and met up with his friend and his friend's mom (hereinafter referred to as "The Dutch", because that's where they're from). 

We ate dinner in the restaurant there then, playing it by ear, we agreed to go down to a "gaming" bar that Palmer (and friend #1) had gone to the night before. I drove down there with Palmer and the Dutch. We parked and found the bar, then I walked over to meet up with the girls, who had ridden a bus over (since the car only fits 5 people... next time, I'm holding out for something with a third row!).

We ended up closing the bar down, leaving a few minutes before midnight. We played a couple of card games that they had there, Uno Flip and Exploding Kittens. Couple of fun facts about the games... Palmer was the only one who had ever played Uno Flip, and the Dutch had never heard of Exploding Kittens. Uno Flip was pretty self explanatory, but the Exploding Kittens game was in French. Which none of us spoke. Yeah, that was "fun." If you've never heard of Exploding Kittens, it's a silly card game where you basically just have to follow the instructions on the cards, and avoid drawing a card with an exploding kitten on it.

FYI, kinda hard to follow written instructions on cards if they're written in a language you don't speak.

At the end of the night, Palmer and I drove the Dutch back to their hotel, then went back downtown to pick up the girls, who were waiting inside the bar. Then we headed back to the apartment.

The following morning, Palmer had arranged to meet the Dutch at their hotel for breakfast, so I dropped him off there at 9:15 and returned to the apartment to help the girls clear it out. We locked it all up at 10:00 and dropped the keys back off in the management lock box, then drove over to the hotel and parked down the street to wait for Palmer's visit to end. Palmer finished up, and we drove back to Frankfurt.

One more trip before Palmer returns to the states, but you'll have to tune in next week for that post!