Luxembourg City and Trier (written by my son)

A big hello to my mom’s blog friends, I’m late with my post this year. Summer passed too fast and starting high school has been a big change for me. There is so much homework and late night sports and practice. I hope you guys are still interested in my travel posts after every summer. Or you might be new to my mom’s blog and not know that I go on a short guy’s trip every year with my dad while we are in Germany visiting our German family consisting of my grandparents, uncle aunt and little niece.

This year we went to Luxembourg City and Trier

Luxembourg is a tiny country (actually the 28th smallest in the world) and the capital is Luxembourg City. Luxembourgish sounds like gibberish and I didn’t even learn a single word. It’s about the same size as Rhode Island, isn’t that crazy? It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Luxembourg City was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 because it has so many amazingly preserved old buildings and structures.

Trier is the oldest city in Germany and along the Mosel river. Remember my mom’s post about our trip with my Opa to Cochem along the Mosel river this year as well (click HERE and HERE if you missed it)? I got to go to the same region twice. Once by car and once by train.

And I always love a nice relaxing train ride especially since it doesn’t include traffic and we don’t have nice train connections like that here in the US. I always wonder why there are so little trains in the USA because I’d love to be able to ride them more often at home too.

Luxembourg City

The following photos in Luxembourg were taken in the city quarter called “Der Grund” along the Alzette River, definitely the best part of the city.

I went exploring around “Der Grund” and found a tiny church in the side of the hill. Pretty cool!

I didn’t get to eat anything new and special this time around. You guys know how much I like to try new food.

This is what I ate the first night. Its croquettes with french fries, nothing special. But croquettes are special to me because we don’t really eat them in the US. It was hard to find any new food specialties in Luxembourg as they don’t really have their own cuisine so we went with the flow.

On top of The Grund there was an area where you were allowed to go in the walls and explore. You had the perspective of a soldier with a bow and arrow or a cannon.

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg

I had to sneak in a Döner. My favorite! I guess they pretty much taste the same all around Europe and are another thing I wish we had in the US. It’s Germanized Turkish food. It is a type of “mystery meat” (we think it’s lamb) with garlic sauce, tomatoes, cabbage, and lettuce. Extremely tasty!

Trier

Kurfürstliches Palais (Electoral Palace)

Sadly you couldn’t go in this palace. My dad and I walked 20 minutes to only see the outside.

Hauptmarkt (Main Market)

Always good to get a Bratwurst in every city. Very tasty and always reliable to kill your hunger and is very cheap on top of it.

To be honest this is probably the biggest church I’ve seen, but it wasn’t that impressive. Just kidding!

At this point I was starting to get annoyed from having to take so many pictures. Lol!

Porta Nigra

The Porta Nigra is a large Roman city gate. It is today the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps.

Its definitely the oldest building I’ve ever been in. The gate dates back to about A.D. 180

The year of 370! That’s so crazy.

This dish wasn’t anything unordinary at all it was just an Asian restaurant and I had lemon grilled chicken with rice. Very tasty but nothing special.

Vianden Castle

This was our final destination the castle of Vianden in Luxembourg. This castle was not the easiest place to access. You had to take an hour train ride, a twenty minute bus ride, and walk up a hill or take a ski lift to get there. Not the easiest but worth it. This castle was constructed between 11 and 14 A.D.

Vianden Castle is a great place to visit because of its beauty and history but there was also a festival going on at the same time we happened to go. I love medieval castle festivals.

This is the castle church. I think the colors and style are so beautiful.

As part of the festival were all these people dressed up in costumes as soldiers and hunters. They would go around the castle to different areas and shoot off their guns. Whenever I saw them I’d always try to get away as fast as possible and hold my ears!