We spent the morning slowly getting ourselves together and headed down toward Luxembourg city, stopping off to update blogs outside McDonalds (never thought I'd be so happy to see them - you don't even have to buy anything if you can park close enough to get free WiFi!!).
We got to the city itself in the afternoon and it is truly amazing. It is like nothing I've seen before, a complete mash-up of styles, from the intimidatingly gothic to the downright picturesque (a word I'm using quite a lot I know). This place has the lot.
From the bit of history I have read on the place it has changed hands more often than a typist with RSI. The Burgundians, the French, the Spanish, the Austrians and the Germans have all held it at some point and have all added to it's defense too, making it the "Gibralter of the north". Some more interesting facts about the city, it is divided into three levels of defenses; the inner 'girdle' is fortified with bastions, the next contained no less than 15 forts, and third layer a massive exterior wall which contained an extra nine forts all hewn into the rock. There is 23km of underground tunnels, 40,000 m² of underground rooms (said to be bombproof) in the foundations of the city. The city surface covers 120 hectares while the fortifications covered - at their peak - 180 hectares.
Makes you think really. It doesn't matter how careful you are, if someone really wants to get in...
There are a huge number of stairs and steep slopes to climb and I'm sure we have done the equivalent of a step-aerobic marathon today.
On leaving the city we headed to the "Land of the red rocks" which is where iron ore used to be mined making the rocks red, hence the name. The problem was we headed a little too far to the west and actually crossed the border back into Belgium again to a town called Auberge, where we spent the night.
Click here for our Flickr photo album
We got to the city itself in the afternoon and it is truly amazing. It is like nothing I've seen before, a complete mash-up of styles, from the intimidatingly gothic to the downright picturesque (a word I'm using quite a lot I know). This place has the lot.
From the bit of history I have read on the place it has changed hands more often than a typist with RSI. The Burgundians, the French, the Spanish, the Austrians and the Germans have all held it at some point and have all added to it's defense too, making it the "Gibralter of the north". Some more interesting facts about the city, it is divided into three levels of defenses; the inner 'girdle' is fortified with bastions, the next contained no less than 15 forts, and third layer a massive exterior wall which contained an extra nine forts all hewn into the rock. There is 23km of underground tunnels, 40,000 m² of underground rooms (said to be bombproof) in the foundations of the city. The city surface covers 120 hectares while the fortifications covered - at their peak - 180 hectares.
Makes you think really. It doesn't matter how careful you are, if someone really wants to get in...
There are a huge number of stairs and steep slopes to climb and I'm sure we have done the equivalent of a step-aerobic marathon today.
On leaving the city we headed to the "Land of the red rocks" which is where iron ore used to be mined making the rocks red, hence the name. The problem was we headed a little too far to the west and actually crossed the border back into Belgium again to a town called Auberge, where we spent the night.
Click here for our Flickr photo album
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