Susanna's Blog: Luxembourg City in 24 hours!

This past weekend Cara, Lindsay, Jennifer and I went to Luxembourg to meet up with Annie and Erin. We had a wonderful 24 hours there. Unfortunately the weather was not great, some drizzle and lots of grey. After arriving we checked into the hostel and headed straight back out again to take a walking tour of the city. It was 1000 years of history in two and a half hours. It kind of went along the lines of: it was destroyed by the French, rebuilt, destroyed by the Spanish, rebuilt, destroyed by the Germans... etc. Oh, and in the case of the fortress had to be destroyed after the treaty in London in 1867.

After the tour we went out for dinner and then out for drinks for St. Patrick's day. Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast in the hostel. The next stop was the Chocolate House. We had some hot chocolate spoons, where you stir the chunk of chocolate on the spoon into hot milk. Yum!

Before catching our bus/train back home some of us checked out the Casemates. These are tunnels/underground military defense systems in the rock underneath where the fortress once stood. Walking through them was so cool. Part was like walking through a tunnel, but then you would come along to these rooms with windows to the outside. Some of them had canons in them that would have been part of the defense. In areas there were stairs up or down to more areas of the casemates. It was exciting, especially where the lights were broken and you had to go up or down a small spiral staircase in the dark!

View from the top of the cliff.

There are basically two levels of the city - up and down. We got some exercise walking up and down. Though there is even an elevator at one point to get from the top to the bottom.

View of the royal palace

The palace is also where the Grand Duke works. You can sort of see the one guard who was walking up and down the front. We also saw the government buildings and the windows where the prime minister works. The office is on the ground floor and there are no guards. Apparently they also don't have guards if any foreign government officials visit, unless from Israel or Palestine.