LUXEMBOURG & TRIER, GERMANY

Monday, July 28th

With Kelsey gone, the 3 ladies and baby headed to Luxembourg Monday morning. Steph and I (ok mostly me) wanted to cross off one more country on our bucket list. 

We were greeted by some creepy graffiti. 

We found the main drag, Rue Phillippe II, was fairly easy to find with these brightly colored umbrellas.

The art display is called, "Let the Sunshine In" and was started by the city to promote tourism. It worked! We're here!

We didn't spend much time in Luxembourg, but we enjoyed what we saw! There was a quartet  singing, "Under my umbrella" as we sat and grabbed a bite to eat. I had one of the most delicious sandwiches. It was just a tuna sandwich on pretzel bread, but it was some of the best pretzel bread I've ever had. It was so good, I'm writing about it!!

The 3 of us also noticed that there were a lot of good looking men in Luxembourg. They were everywhere, and they were all dressed very well. The combination of French and German does them well!

After running back to the car in the pouring rain, we hopped in and were off to Trier, Germany.

We had a little difficulty parking. I'm laughing just thinking about it. The GPS took us to a hospital parking. It must have just been for emergency vehicles and employees because the gate wouldn't dispense a ticket. It was clear we needed an official card/pass to get in. However, Liz found a small, one-way entrance to the left of the gates. We laughed at how silly and poorly designed the gates had been since we could just sneak right past them. It wasn't until we were inside getting strange looks from people that it dawned on us that we probably shouldn't be there. We tried getting out an official gate, but once again...you needed a pass. We couldn't get out! What do we do now? After a few minutes of sheer panic, we just drove down the wrong way on a one-way street praying that no one would come zipping around a blind corner. Meanwhile, during the debacle, Henley decided to have a meltdown in the backseat. Ruh roh! We drove about 5 minutes to the next available parking, and gave Henley a bottle. PheW! And meltdown over. 

...Now off to see a city! Haha! Once again we rewarded ourselves with some retail therapy. Trier is a cute town, AND they have some good shopping! I liked it already! 

We decided to try and learn a few bits of history while we there too. We started with Porta Nigra. This is the last of 4 Roman gates still standing in Trier, and it's one of the more impressive Roman fortifications in Germany. It was standing here that made me realize just how vast the Roman Empire was. I felt like I was a long way from Rome.

Steph, Liz and I spotted a pretzel joint on our walk down this main street. They had "butter pretzels." Doesn't that sound amazing?! I ordered 3 for us. It was a pretzel cut in half with a brick of butter spread around inside. Stephanie couldn't eat it. She just threw it away. Unfortunately, she never did have any luck with pretzels in Germany! That came as a big surprise since that's one of the foods they're known for.  ( The picture above doesn't correlate to the pretzel story - I forgot to take a pretzel photo. Next time...I'll add that in with my fry photo in Bruges.)

Notice the door two-stories up? This house used to belong to wealthy men before safe banking. They had to keep their money protected in their own homes, and everyone knew it! Eesh! I couldn't help but wonder how they got their groceries up there.

Market Square

There's an interesting story about the archbishop in Trier that was hated by his people. They had conflicting views on just about everything. The tower seen here was raised in 1507 by the mayor to make the people's church taller than the cathedral. The gold letters read, "Stay awake and pray." 

The archbishop raised just one of the cathedral towers to be taller and finished the quote with: "for you never know the hour when the Lord will come."

This cathedral is THE oldest in Germany! Construction began in AD 326.

This design in the brick reminded me of the labyrinth in Ravenna...

(Ravenna labyrinth) 

I found this interesting: "If you look at the original Roman construction squarely, you'll see that it's not perfectly vertical. Locks were built along the Mosel River in the 1960s, depleting groundwater - which was the only thing preserving the church's original wooden foundation. When dry, the foundation disintegrated, and the walls began to settle. Architects competed to find a way to prevent the cathedral from collapsing. The winning solution: a huge steel bracket above the main nave, holding the walls up with cables." Thanks, Rick!

We moved on toward the Imperial Baths.

Apparently, there's some South Park fans in Trier. 

Rick Steves' mentioned visiting the Basilica/Imperial Throne Room, Archaeoligical Museum and the Imperial Baths. We were more enticed by these beautiful gardens! I felt like I should be singing something from the 'Sound of Music.'

 I love this photo. They accidentally grabbed each other's hands while they took the photo and they started giggling. :)

We moved onto the Imperial Baths, but realized we had to pay to get in. I think we were just ready to do a little more shopping, so I just took a photo from outside. :)

We got a quick view of the Basilica as we were leaving. I was trying to balance my umbrella and camera while I was taking this photo. A German woman came up behind me and sounded like she was yelling at me. I just stared at her because I literally had no idea what she was trying to tell me. I apologized, and she grabbed my umbrella. In broken English she told me she would hold my umbrella while I took the photo. Haha! She was being so nice, but her native language just makes her sound angry. 

Through the rain, we made it over to another DUNKIN! Praise the deal lord baby Jesus for delicious coffee and donuts! Oh DD, how I love you!

On our way back to the car after a little more shopping, I saw this sweet pup. He was HUGE! He seemed very distracted by all the chaos going on around him. I whistled like a bird, and he looked right at me and cocked his head. His owner standing next to him laughed too. 

We took one more side trip before heading back to Kelsey's. We stopped by Spandahlem Air Base. It was fun seeing another base in Europe. We grabbed a few snacks for the road. On the way back to Kelsey's, I sat in the backseat with Henley. He was on the verge of crying. I started making some "boy noises" like the sound of an explosion. It startles him, but he LOVES it! He also laughs when he sneezes. Haha! He's such a funny baby!

We decided to cut our trip short by one day. I think we were all a little pooped. We fit in a TON to our week-long trip. We were all somewhat anxious about the 13 hour drive home, but we did it! It actually flew by! I loved getting to see Belgium and Germany with 2 friends and a baby! That's the way to travel! But I'm also excited to see Nick in just one week!