I’ve been quite busy editing and uploading images to Flickr and am happy to say I am done! I uploaded almost 1,000 images from that little two week trip of ours. I’ll provide an index to get to the pics easier. But for now…
When I left off, it was Thursday and we had just visited the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium. It’s not too far from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (just think of it as a country). The City of Luxembourg, which is not only the largest city there but also the capital, was our destination for the evening. The rest of the evening was uneventful. We found our hotel (a nondescript Hilton), had dinner and went to bed.
The next day is when things got interesting again. That’s when we went into Luxembourg City.
Remember, Luxembourg was yet another country. We went from Austria (German speaking) to Switzerland (Swiss-German speaking) to Belgium (Dutch speaking) and then to Luxembourg where they speak a language all their own. Really. It’s called Lëtzebuergesch. Annelies and Yves both speak Dutch, French and English. Annelies says her German is horrible. The Letzebuergesch is a crazy mix of German that neither Yves nor Annelies understood.
Anyway… shortly after arriving in Luxembourg City, we had to find a place to eat. We were all starving. So we stopped in this awesome little French bakery. I’d recently told Hubby how I’d been craving these apple turnovers from Baltimore’s Patisserie Poupon bakery (I hadn’t been there in YEARS). So imagine my delight when I saw they had apple turnovers prepared the exact same way.
Don’t you just love Hubby’s expression in this picture? It totally says, “Really? You’re going to take pictures of the stuff we’re eating again? It’s not that interesting really.” But the apple turnover was SO interesting that not only did I have to take a picture, I had to eat a second one. They were both delightful.
Want to gess what our first stop was after breakfast? Hint… it was NOT McDonald’s.
Give up?
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Luxembourg. Cathedrals thrill me. They’re all just so big. So ornate. So grand.
We roamed around the city looking at buildings and such for a few hours. Annelies and I even popped into a store or two. This is what we saw when we came back outside…
Luxembourg really was a pretty city. We had a fine time strolling around chatting, taking pictures, looking at all of the cool old buildings and interesting stores, etc. But the best part of the day came after we left the city. That’s when Annelies directed Yves to drive through the Mullerthal, also known as Luxembourg’s “Little Switzerland.” Yves replied with, “But they just left big Switzerland. What do they need to go to Little Switzerland for?”(No wonder he and Hubby get along so well, eh?) She may have hit him and said something to the effect of “just drive,” but Hubby and I were too busy chuckling at Yves to remember exactly.
Annelies and I had both read that the Mullerthal was a pretty area. She read a bit more than me apparently because it was she who directed us to Larochette where we saw and got to explore a really cool castle ruin. Yet another place dating back to the 13th century.
The castle sits atop a promontory of Luxembourg sandstone. It was all quite impressive. And it was quite a climb to get up there.
Of course, when we got to the top, we saw a parking lot. Which meant we could have driven up there.
We wandered around the place for at least an hour, probably longer. We ate lunch there, too.
Did I mention that I REALLY enjoyed poking around the castle ruins?
But wait, there’s more…
Really. After we left the castle on the way back to Annelies and Yves’ house, we stopped at the Bastogne Historical Center, which was pretty much near the epicenter of the World War II Battle of the Bulge.
And for the finale. The piece de resistance, if you will…
It’s “just” a cow. I like cows. I saw SO many different kinds of cows while we were in Europe. Like the very pretty Brown Swiss cows. I also saw lots of plain ole black-and-white cows. But do you want to know what was my favorite cow? The Highland Cattle that were walking down the middle of a country rode as we were cruising through on our motorcycles. Seriously. I came around a blind curve, at a reasonable speed thank goodness, and here are these hairy cows walking right smack down the center of the road. Here’s a picture (not mine) so you can see what I mean. Had it just been me and Hubby riding, I would’ve stopped in a heartbeat. But there were twelve other motorcycles riding in our group. So I just laughed out loud and continued on my merry way.
Anyway, I didn’t want folks making fun of me for taking cow pictures, but I did manage to sneak a couple. So I figured it would be fun to post one.
I’ll try to organize my Flickr images into smaller, more manageable sets for faster viewing. In the meantime, if you want to see the last installment of our trip pics, CLICK HERE to go to my Flickr page.
I’d say to Dad, “YES, I’m taking a picture of food again!” I do it a lot, too; I think there’s close to 150 shots in my food and drink Flickr album.
Also, is it just purely coincidence I’ve commented on or favorited a high percentage of the pictures you used today? Lol. Glad to hear the story behind the castle, I’d been wondering about it.
Also #2, I’d *love* to see a highland cow! (Is it still highland cattle if it’s just one?)
That’s one of the things about traveling alone… you get to take pictures of what you want, when you want and as often as you want.