Our Trip to The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

To celebrate my military service, and because we live in the middle of Europe, I wanted to go see a historical military site.  After talking with my husband Brian about different places we could go (and him suggesting stupid stuff like, “I’m pretty sure WW2 soldiers raced cars around the Nurnburg Ring and we should too”), we settled on going to Luxembourg, the country, state and city of Luxembourg.  It is also known as the grand duchy of Luxembourg which is tricky for me since I have only read that and have never heard it.  So everytime my brain tries to pronounce "duchy", it gets confussed.  Doochy, dutchy, douchy, dookey?  I don’t know.  I could be here for awhile.

 

So we drove to Luxembourg, turned around and went to Germany, then back to Luxembourg and back to Germany again...in a matter of hours.  Brian had loaned his GPS to a new guy in his shop, but he assured me that our map apps on our phones would work no problem.  (Take note...car guys are good at getting you somewhere fast, not at getting you to the right spot.)

We left the house and went to the gas station to fill up on gas and fruit gummies.  At least the gas lasted the whole hour and a half to Luxembourg.  I like to feed the girls gummies because it keeps Shylee from talking for hours, and keeps Kaydance from crying.  I even stored one pack for an emergency quiet button for the trip home. 

Our first stop was the American Military Cemetery.

 

 

Best stop of the day.  It made me proud of where I come from and what I have accomplished.  I thought it would be more difficult to explain to my five year old where we were and why it was so important. 

Shylee at the grave site of Gen George Patton

 

She got it though.  Love her!  It was super cold out walking around the cemetery so after we thought that we had seen enough, we hopped back in the car and got everyone buckled up.

Brian put his phone in the phone-holder-thing-that’s-strangely-attached-to-the-window-thing and waited for the map to come up.  No map.  Our phones had service in Luxembourg, but no data so we had no GPS.  Car guys.

Brian said, “Where’s your map?”

I said, “Of Luxembourg?  I keep it in my other purse.  I thought you said we would have our phones.”

Then he said, “Well I thought we would but we don’t have data.  No data, no maps.”

“I know what we can do.  Let’s drive back to where we know we have data.”

He said, “We haven’t had data since Germany.”

“Yep, let’s go back to Germany.”

He said, “That’s a dumb idea.  We are not driving back to Germany to get directions to our hotel that is ten miles away.”

So we drove back to Germany.

Luckily Luxembourg is the size of Old Mother Hubberd’s Shoe so we were only 20 minutes from the border of Germany.  As soon as we crossed the border near Trier we got data back and could program the directions to the hotel in, so we did, and back to Luxembourg the country, state, and city we went.

We arrived at the hotel and parked the car, checked in, unloaded our bags, used the restroom and were on our way to discover the capitol. 

 

 

We decided to just hop on the city bus and take it downtown so that we wouldn’t have to drive back to Germany twice to get there and get back to the hotel.  I have to give it to Luxembourg, the people there are NICE!  It may be because I have spent the last three years living in Germany, but it was a wonderful feeling.  Once downtown we walked around and saw the palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and everything else there was to see.

 

I wanted to take my picture with this guy, but Brian wouldn’t let me.

 

We found this awesome chocolate haven.  I had been dying to go here after reading about it online.  They serve you a warm cup of milk and you pick the kind of chocolate you like and melt it and stir it into your milk for hot chocolate.  We found it, but were disappointed that there was only one table inside and it was full.  Since it was thirty degrees out and the girls were getting grumpy (I assume because they were out of gummies), we decided to keep going. 

 

 

After walking the whole city we thought it must be time to head back to the room.  Maybe we could put the girls to bed and watch a movie and order drinks to be sent up to the room.  By the way, that's what happens when you have little kids.  You get lame. 

When we checked our watches it was 3PM.  This was a problem.  We had seen the all there was to see, it was literally freezing outside and we were faced with spending at least six hours locked in a room with two animals foaming at the mouth for gummies, which we were almost out of.  We decided to ditch the hotel and go home early. 

On our way home Kaydance started crying so I went to give her the emergency pack of gummies that I saved for her.  I couldn't find them so I looked up at Brian to ask him if he knew where they were.  He couldn't answer me because his mouth was full of gummies. 

So we drove back to Germany....again.