Wednesday 24th September - Luxembourg
Instead of going straight to Luxembourg we took a detour to the Battle of Waterloo Museum. The site is dominated by La Butte du Lion, or the Lion's Mound, which is a 130 foot high monument erected in 1826 at the request of William I of the Netherlands, who wished to mark the presumed spot where his eldest son was wounded on June 18, 1815. It is topped by a lion symbolizing the victory of the monarchies.
At the bottom of the Mound is the Panorama, a circular building that houses a painting created in 1912 by Louis Dumoulin, whose Panorama du tour du monde was presented at the 1900 Paris World Fair. This Panorama is a historical legacy, as it is one of the few still in place today.
As you enter the Museum there is a very large model of the Battle of Waterloo which is 25 square metres with over 30,000 model soldiers and horses. It’s amazing.
The museum is rather “chaotic” but as Richard said, the battle was rather chaotic too. Maybe Napoleon and Wellington knew what they were doing but I certainly didn’t!
The museum itself is very dark with lots of pictures in frames, some of which had something moving in them - very clever. There is also a walkway up an incline with foot soldiers and horses on either side. To the right it was Napoleon and to the left Wellington.
Coming out of the museum itself there were no directions of where to go next, but somehow we managed to find ourselves in the Panorama. The painting was amazing and there was a model of a battlefield which was a bit eerie. We then found ourselves outside at the bottom of the Mound, we decided that climbing it wasn’t the thing for us! However, we couldn’t find our way out! (Needless to say we did eventually!)
From the museum we drove to Luxembourg, mainly in the pouring rain. All was good until we got near to Luxembourg where, at 5pm, we hit traffic and seemed to be in a never ending jam. At one stage we came across a road closure which seemed to surprise the locals let alone Google! The deviation (which wasn’t marked) took us about a further 15 kms! We finally arrived at our site and our pitch was unusual as it was a row of nose to tail motorhomes. I don’t think it would very nice in the summer when you want to sit out, but we were only here for two nights.
171 miles
Thursday 25th September - Luxembourg
We were looking forward to our visit to Luxembourg City, though the weather forecast was abysmal.
First thing was to catch a bus, all buses in Luxembourg are free, which is probably just as well as we had two buses to catch but managed to use four! One was the wrong number which I realised when we were on it and the other one was the right number but going the wrong way!!
This was the stream by one of the bus stops!
Luxembourg City is split in two by a gorge, this gave the area strength when Lucilinburhuc (small castle) was established in 963. For almost a thousand years, the area housed a fortress that became so strong that it was known as “Gibraltar of the North”.
We had a trip booked on the little train and it was one of the best little train rides we have been on. The old Luxembourg is in the gorge and the newer buildings are either built on the side or on the top. The train took us down to the Grund via the fort and lots of tiny narrow streets, it was really amazing.
You might wonder what this photo is all about, but what I could see it was a large platform with people sitting round a table suspended from a crane!
As we got off the train we were able to look over the Grund. I could have stood there all day - just looking.
We had arranged to meet a couple, Kevin and Liz who we had met on our Wandering Bird Normandy trip back in April, for lunch. They are also heading for the Wandering Bird German meet up in Zugspitze but going a different route and it just so happened we were all in Luxembourg at the same time. We found a dog friendly restaurant/bistro called Urban where we had very good burgers.
When we left the restaurant it was raining and we really didn’t feel like any more sightseeing, so we wandered back to our bus stop via the Place du Guillame II, which looked very sad in the rain.
This is the Ducal Palace which we passed on our way to the little train, I thought we go back later but the weather had other ideas.
I already have Switzerland on our (my!) bucket list of places to go to and now Luxembourg will have to be revisited and it was be nice to see the rest of the country too
Friday 26th September - Erbersbronn, Forbach
Before we left Richard wanted to empty our grey water tank. He looked on the site plan and saw “borne de vidange” which translates from Luxembougish to “drain plug”, he assumed that that was what he wanted!
We left the site and stopped at a very nice, rather upmarket, supermarket up the road, where I got some lovely food.
The drive across to the Black Forest was in and out of France and Germany. I was trying to write the blog and each time we crossed a border the old internet would go off and I had to wait for the new one to come on - honestly first world problems! At one stage I got in a panic as I was trying to sign up for German tolls and the app couldn’t find us - oh silly me, we were in France at that moment! When I finally did it, our toll was €2.50!
The last 20 kilometres of the journey was driving up and up and up into the clouds, the road wasn’t that wide and we could hardly see the traffic coming the other way. Suddenly we were out of the clouds and going through pretty German villages. I had read that the Black Forest is so called as it is so dense - the part we drove through certainly was dark.
We found our site in the bottom of a gorge. It was just about all permanent touring caravans with built on extensions - one even had a smart front door!
We had no phone or internet, but if I stood outside reception I did get a signal! When I got back to the van from my time standing around downloading films for the evening, Kiwi-fi (internet) was back on!
Richard took Rio for a walk beside this stream which is by the site. He (Rio, not Richard) got the zoomies - poor dog hadn’t had a decent run for a few days 🥺
159 miles
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