Luxembourg 2

Our second day in Luxembourg was spent visiting forests and castles.

We started with a drive to- the lake near the town where there were the remains of a Roman ruin. It was a bit difficult to determine what it had been as the signs were only in French and German, but it seems as if it could have been an ancient Roman Spa.

The lake looked as though it would be a very popular place in summer.

Our GPS navigated us to the top of a hill near the little town of Echternach, where we had been staying. It seemed to a place of rocky outcrops and bright green of the new shoots of the elm tree forest. We went for a short walk to get an overview of the valley overlooking the town.

I think that there are at least 67 castles in Luxembourg and we visited two of them. The first as at Beaufort where the ruined castle there looked like it had seen much better days.

However, castle at Luxembourg’s third principle city, Vianden, was really stunning.  It had once been in decay, but it has now been fully restored by the royal family who own the site. It was constructed from the 11th to the 4th Century on the foundations of a Roman Fort. It is one of the larget, and most scenic, feudal residencies of the Romanesque and Gothic periods in Europe. It was great to visit and gave us a good taste of life in a castle – complete with toilet and deep well (although obviously not inn the same place.

We finished the day with a drive into the capital, Luxemburg. It looked to have a lot of charm, but the traffic was so busy that it was very hard toe much. I had Kenny navigate us to the Royal Palace, and Jill & Ruth had their camera ready to take a photograph of an entrance, but got confused and ended up taking a picture of the side door. The main entrance was in a large square 100 metres further along the  road.

We finished the day by driving the 30 odd kilometres back to our hotel for another walk around the town.