Adventures of a Student in Leuven: luxembourg!

So this post is long overdue.. okay, more like four days overdue. But still! I know you've all been anxiously awaiting my post & pictures about my weekend excursion to Luxembourg.. so here it is!!

10.6-7.2012: Luxembourg!

Saturday

I was SUPER EXCITED since it was my first overnight, hostel experience, planned-by-me-and-not-my-mom, weekend trip. Hooray. I traveled with the usual gang, Claire, Kelsey, Lincoln and myself. We woke up early Saturday morning, finished packing, made a lunch for the train and were out the front door before the sun was up! Yes, that was a literal statement. It was dark when we left.

Our train was set to leave at 7:30 AM. Now, I don't know about my travel companions but I was raring and ready to go.. I'm somewhat of a morning person. We had the luxury of having a car almost all to ourselves, so obviously I was singing and being loud and trying to get everyone excited for our adventure! It didn't work out so well. Oh well, I tried! On the bright side, we got to watch the sunrise as our train pulled away from the station.. it was truly glorious.

"Show me how excited you are for Luxembourg!!

Kelsey & I are clearly on the same level of being awake.. definitely.

A little bit blurry due to the moving train, but what a wonderful way to start off our trip!

Once we got to Luxembourg it was a big flurry of wandering around, glancing into buildings, wandering some more, taking some AWESOME tourist pictures, and wandering some more.. so I figure I'll just make this more like a picture book instead of me typing a novel out? Yeah? I think it'll work well.

First stop? COFFEE. We were in dire need of a caffeinated pick-me-up. While we were there, this sweet old lady approached us, set a couple chocolates on our table, and proclaimed in French, "Belles filles,"(beautiful girls), and then proceeded to walk right out the door. Well, what a welcome to Luxembourg! I think I'm gonna like it here..

Tourist Lauren, ready to go!

I had no idea that Luxembourg would be so lush and beautiful!!! It was quite different than Leuven. Part of Lux, the City Center, is located atop a plateau that overlooks the rest of the city that is situated in the valley below. It made for some difficult, hilly treks, but the views were absolutely breathtaking!! Not to mention that we were there right when leaves were starting to change.. oh my. What a beautiful city.

The tourist pic strikes again... not sorry.

We found our hostel!!! It took quite a while.. but that was probably because we were stopping every five seconds to take pictures. Oops?

These are our "super excited for our first hostel" faces!

Autumn leaves...

Pretty friends, ready to explore this new city!

HILL. This picture doesn't do it justice...

Never ending staircase.. oh my word. We took a break for a couple minutes at the top of this one...

View from the TOP of the never ending staircase.. definitely worth the climb. You can see our hostel waaaay off in the distance on the right!

The Grand Ducal Palace! This is where the Grand Duke of Luxembourg lives.

Quite the intense looking guard.

Me in front of the palace! Hoorah

Definitely one of my better moments.. I'm staying true to form.

That's a little better, no?

So picturesque.

Do you think we were on the same wavelength with this one?

BEAUTIFUL BRIDGE. I took far too many pictures that look EXACTLY like this one. Oh well. Haters gonna hate.

Some Protestant church that we sought refuge in during a downpour. Oh yeah, it rained almost ALL DAY on the first day we were there. Party hard.

Alanis is coming to Luxembourg! Too bad I'll miss it.. I know I have some friends who are pretty jealous that I'm this close to a concert :)

The Cathedrale Notre-Dame! Now, I've been in a lot of churches. And I really like churches. A lot. But this one was definitely in the top five that I've ever been to, and I mean that. It was beautiful, majestic, silent, peaceful, reverent, spiritual, and every other positive adjective that you could think of. Wow.

I lit a candle, praying for friends & family at home and for you, Xave.

My camera literally couldn't capture the entire altar view.

And no church is complete without a grand organ!

Our next stop was the Casemates! I told you about how part of Luxembourg City is set atop a plateau, well the rock cliffs make for a perfect, natural fortification. The Casemates are these tunnels built into the cliffs that were used for defense against attacks, prisons, and bomb shelters. How neat!

There were HUNDREDS of little lookouts like this one, each offering a spectacular view of the city below.

Looking UP to the top of a well! Trust me.. you didn't want to look down. Scary.

Looking out from the Casemates.

Real life cannon!

Clearly, quite experienced at firing cannons.

SUPER narrow, tiny staircase leading down to the lower prison and shelter area. This is where the claustrophobia starts to set in a little bit.

Never-ending tunnel?

View from one of the lookouts.

Fleur-de-lis on a cannon.

One of very few pictures of all four of us.. yay! A little bit blurry. But I like it.

So, it looks like we're at a super fancy place for dinner, right? Well you would be right in thinking that. In fact, it was WAY too fancy for us. As in, there was no way that we could afford eating a full meal there. We decided not to be rude and just leave, so we ordered a drink before excusing ourselves to find a more reasonably priced place to eat. But that was the problem... Everything in Lux was crazy expensive. Like, at least twenty euros for a simple entree expensive. And that wasn't exactly what we had been anticipating. We wandered around the Grund - area in the valley that was apparently the hotspot for "nightlife" - for probably 45 minutes looking for a restaurant that fit our budget. You know where we ended up? Maybe Not Bob's. Yes, it was just as American as it sounds. But by that point, we didn't care. You could say that we were starting to get a little cranky and frustrated, so at that point it didn't matter WHERE we were eating, as long as it was happening... at a reasonable price.

Sorry that was a long ramble. After searching endlessly for reasonably priced food on Saturday and Sunday, we came to the consensus that Luxembourg would be a great trip for, say... a happily married, well-established couple. Celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. Not so much a cheap, college student getaway as far as prices are concerned, but I definitely enjoyed myself.

ANYWHO. Back to my pretty pictures..

After dinner we decided to wander around the city, just taking in the sights some more. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Luxembourg by night!

Kind of difficult to capture...

Finally, some bright lights!

That beautiful bridge! Didn't turn out so well at night though.. darn.

Mind you, it was raining the entire time that we were out at night, too. So after an hour or two we walked ourselves back to the hostels and quickly went to sleep.. it had been such a long & exhausting day!

Sunday

Well, good morning hostel!! We were off to an early start, yet again! I really wanted to go to Mass at the Cathedrale Notre-Dame, and Lincoln said he'd come too!

The walk to the Cathedral!

The sun was FINALLY shining!! It was an absolutely wonderful morning.

Then we got to the church, and there were all these guards standing outside... "That's weird," I thought. I know a girl who studied in Lux for a semester, and she said that we could probably expect there to be twenty or so people in attendance, that not very many people went to Mass on a regular basis. Well, there sure were people there today!!

We walked inside and there were uniformed, important-looking army men EVERYWHERE! And there was a seating chart. Luckily, they had spots for civilians on the side. But apparently, they were celebrating the "Journée de la Commémoration Nationale," seemingly an important Luxembourgish holiday. The Bishop said Mass (I shook his hand afterward) and the Grand Duke was in attendance, sitting up on the altar. OKAY, that's fine.

I tried to look up the ceremony or the holiday online once I got back, but everything I found was in French. Go figure. So I have no idea what it was for.. but it was AWESOME.

Cathedrale Notre-Dame from the outside!

We met up with Kelsey & Claire and decided to find our way down into the valley to walk among the wonderful nature that we'd been admiring. And yes, this is another picture of the SAME bridge. SORRY

Luxembourg flag with the moon in the background.. excuse me while I try and be artsy.

Bridge AND flags AND cool double decker bus on the bridge.

Soaking up the rays down in the valley.

View looking up at the Cathedrale Notre-Dame.

The most EPIC sledding hill ever. I want to come back just so that I can go down this hill.

Just once.. that's all I need.

GREEEEEEEN and lovely.

We walked through this little orchard, and the apples just looked TOO GOOD to resist...

and they were. YUM.

Canal in the valley!

Probably one of my favorite views of the entire weekend. But, wait a second...

I made this picture EXTRA big so that you could see that this was taken from right where I'm standing in my picture!!! This one (taken by screenshot from my laptop) is on a travel blog called All Things Europe that just posts insanely gorgeous and surreal pictures of Europe. And THIS picture was posted earlier this week. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHERE I WAS STANDING. How neat is that?

At this point in the afternoon, Kelsey, Claire, and I were up for some relaxing. And so that's exactly what we did. We sat in the sunshine in this beautiful park and wrote in our journals. Then we walked around a little through an art far, into some shops, got a coffee, and then sat in another pool of sunshine in a town square and read and people-watched to our little heart's content. It was fantastic.

For those of you who think we were wasting away our day? You have no idea. It was undoubtedly time well spent.