The Ardennes and Luxembourg

A new excursion this weekend. Saturday morning we set out for Luxembourg City. Our aim was to leisurely drive south while taking in the scenery of the Ardennes Forest, stopping at the Bastogne Historical Center (which is located on one of the battlefields from the Battle of the Bulge and has an American Memorial), and then eventually checking out some of the sites in Luxembourg City.

On the drive down toward Bastogne I read in one of our guidebooks about Durbuy, a cute little medieval town. We decided to stop there for lunch and try one of the recommended restaurants, Hostellerie le Sanglier des Ardennes. Durbuy was really quaint with windy, cobblestone streets and cute artisan shops. We found our restaurant and opted for the 4 course lunch menu. It was really good, but took a REALLY long time! Here are a few pictures of Durbuy:

Our lunch restaurant:

The view from our table at lunch:

Here's a video we took on our drive. The scenery was pretty and a nice contrast to the northern part of Belgium that is incredibly flat.

Ardennes Drive1 from Melanyann Garvin on Vimeo.

Our lunch took so long that the Bastogne Historical Center was already closed by the time we made it there. So we journeyed on to Luxembourg City, enjoying the drive along the way.

The next morning we set out for the sites of Luxembourg City. We first needed to find some breakfast so we walked, and walked, and walked looking for SOMETHING, ANYTHING that was open. We have never walked for so long in a city and not seen an open restaurant. In fact, I almost entitled this post: "Never go to Luxembourg on a Sunday unless you're not hungry." Anyway, we finally found a place that was open, but it was only pastries and coffee so we ate something to tide us over and then walked, and walked, and walked back to the city center. We hadn't planned that well and didn't have a city map, and since nothing was open, we couldn't get one. So we admired the old city walls:


And admired the Cathedrale de Notre-Dame from inside and out:


And then we decided to get back in the car and tour the Valley of the Seven Castles. It's really just a drive along the (very small) Eisch River, but it was very scenic and supposedly has one of Europe's finest concentration of castles. There are castles in Koerich, Septfontaines, Ansembourg(2 here), Hollenfels, Schoenfels, and Mersch. We only found 6 of the seven castles- the Mersch castle elluded us and our empty bellies did not lend themselves to a lenghthy search.

Here's a picture of the Castle at Koerich: Mostly ruins

And the 13th century castle at Septfontaines:

There were two castles at Ansembourg, but the first was so hidden up in the hills, among the trees, that we couldn't even take a picture of it. The second was from the 17th century as opposed to the first from the 12th, but we couldn't get a good shot of that one either.

Here's what the castle at Hollenfels looks like as you enter the town:
And here's what it looks like closer up with me jumping up in front of it. I'm a dork... I know.

Here's a the view from Hollenfels Castle:

We are now totally pros at the full-arm-extention-b/c-no one-is-around-to-take-our-picture-shot:


And this is the Castle at Schoenfels:

We used our handy TomTom GPS to navigate between all these tucked away towns. The roads were pretty bare and we felt like we were all alone exploring the Luxembourg countryside. While typing Hollenfels into the GPS, I saw that there was a Holler, Luxembourg. Being that Holler is my maiden name, I was pretty excited to find this. We mapped it and realized it was fairly close to where we were (really everything in Luxembourg could be described as "fairly close" since the whole country is only 35 miles across at it's widest point) so we decided to take a detour and check out Holler. You can click here if you want to see where Holler is in Luxembourg. It's basically in the most northern area, nearly equal distance from both Belgium and Germany.

I got even more excited when I saw this sign and confirmed that Holler did, indeed exist:


And now........ what I'm sure you've all been waiting for.......... your personal tour of Holler, Luxembourg:

Holler, Luxembourg from Melanyann Garvin on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoyed a little peak into our weekend. Where to next?