Luxembourg

In Bruges

We made full use of our couple of days in Bruges. Our Air BnB was about 5km out in a nice quiet area. When we booked it it appealed to us as it gave the option of using the local bus to town or use the 2 bikes that were available. You don't have to guess which we chose. The ride in and back was a breeze and we did it both days, locking the bikes up at a rack and heading back to them after dinner and each days exploring.
It is a real bonus having so many daylight hours.

Strawberries are just so healthy!

We crossed plenty off the "to do" list, visiting the beer museum and doing the 2 hour walking tour of the city. It is an extremely busy place with about 25,000 living within the city walls and another 25k tourists visiting each day. It's like Chadstone at Xmas on steroids!

I think all this Belgian beer is affecting my centre of gravity!

We checked out Bruges 3 years ago and always knew we'd have to come back for a real good look.

Sunday night we caught up with Larry, David and Christine from the bike ride for dinner and Larry's friend Joan who had flown in from Florida to join him.

I'm writing this on the train to Luxembourg via Brussels. It was only about an hour from Bruges to South Brussels where we changed trains and had an hour coffee break before taking off again. 
Almost three hours later and I've woken up to see a completely different landscape than the flat fields of Belgium that we've seen so much of for the last week. We're looking at hills and a pretty hazy horizon. I'm wondering if our run of exceptional weather might be interrupted. The maps app on the phone has us travelling at 127km/hr with half an hour of the trip left. A text has just come in welcoming us to Luxembourg so I take it we've just crossed the border into our 41st country visited - only 153 to go!

Tuesday 12th June
We can't believe what a great Air BnB we are in. We are right in the heart of Luxembourg City and about 2 minutes walk from the square. Luxembourg has a population of half a million plus and the size of the capital is about what I'd expect for the size of the country. What I didn't expect were the views. While the main part of the city is relatively flat, the town itself is built overlooking 3 huge ravines. The views are truly spectacular but sadly the sun is not shining today so not too many photos to do it justice. In fact we were greeted yesterday afternoon by an intense thunderstorm that caused significant flooding throughout the country. 

One of our firsts views from Luxembourg this morning

I'll take another photo of this in a day or 2. They're planting this out with blooming flowers.

We did a 2 hour guided walking tour this afternoon which was informative but spoilt a bit by the persistent drizzle. We're here until Saturday so I figure we can walk ourselves to a few of the vantage points we were at today if the sun finally does come out. Navigating your way around this place is fairly easy as it's not too big.

I'll get better photos once the sun comes out again.

We have a game of golf booked tomorrow at a course about half an hour from here by bus so we're hoping this rain blows itself out. The forecast is for mainly fine and 18 degrees so fingers crossed. We've checked out where to get the 150 bus in the morning and bought a 10 ride ticket to see us out for the week including the trip to the airport on Saturday.  

How lucky were we that we didn't get weather like this on the 2 week ride from Paris to Bruges?

There are some wonderful walks to do here and we did one this morning down along the river. It was fairly steep at times but manageable. 

Cheers. We're off to play golf!