2019 - Day 22: Luxembourg City

The summation of today is water play wins the day!

After staying in a few hotels with curtains like tracing paper, our current hotel has external window blinds so instead of the kids waking up very early at first light, it was suddenly 8.30am and the room was still pitch black!  Whilst the little lie in was nice, it meant we had to forego the hotel breakfast so to catch a train at a reasonable time into Luxembourg City.  The kids seemed quite happy with the rice cake substitute from the snack bag whilst we made the 25 minute train journey from Pétange to the capital.

A makeshift breakfast on the train.

In the Casemates du Bock.

In the Casemates du Bock.

We made it out on to the Pont du Château.

Once we'd arrived at Central station and gained our bearings we made our way to Casemates du Bock.  Dating back to the 17th century, the casemates are the remnants of a network of tunnels and galleries that combined the need to protect the city of Luxembourg with living accommodation for those of importance, all located underneath the castle.  Today the castle is long gone, however it's possible to explore some of the tunnels and cave like openings in the walls where guns would have been positioned to protect the valuable city of Luxembourg, often referred to in historic terms as the Gibraltar of the North.

The Pfaffenthal Lift.

Forrest suddenly realised he was standing on a glass floor.

The view from the top of the lift.

The City of Luxembourg is split onto a number of levels and in recent years a new elevator and funicular have been built to help both locals and visitors alike get between the low and high parts of the city.  The elevator, named the Pfaffenthal Lift, rises 65m and has a glass-floored viewing platform at the top.  We took the elevator up and then back down after taking in the view, but we can certainly appreciate that for locals who used to have to climb up, it's a valuable addition to the town!  A short walk from the bottom of the elevator was the Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg Funicular.  As funiculars go it's quite short, the journey lasts just 63 seconds, but linking the mainline station of Pfaffenthal to the tram line and European Parliament above, it seems to be a well used transport link.

A very short but useful funicular ride.

On battery power.

Deciding not to descend on the European Parliament, we went for the tram option and travelled to the current end of the line at Place de l'Étoile.  There's currently a lot of work ongoing in the city to extend the tram line through to the central railway station.  When we got off the tram I noticed that there were no overhead electric wires, and from having a quick Google discovered that the trams run using something the manufacturers CAF calls Greentech Freedrive for some of the route, to avoid the need to install electric wires across the historic parts of the city.

Water play in the Parc Municipal.

Loving it when the locks release the water.

Enjoying the surge of water from the lock.

Just a little bit wet!

Just a little bit wet!

It was now time for the kids to let off some steam so after a quick picnic in the sprawling Parc Municipal, we headed for the kids playground.  Set around a large wooden pirate ship there's all the usual swings and slides that you'd expect, together with a very impressive water play area.  We'd forgotten to pack the kids swimwear into the day bag, but since we always carry some spare clothes we managed to make outfits suitable for the water and both kids had an amazing time.

Forrest isn't sure about the Hotchocspoon.

And neither is Paloma!

Cub watching the guards outside the Palais Grand-Ducal.

Once we'd finally managed to drag the kids away from the water and back into their dry clothes, we tried to track down a famous cafe for hot chocolate, called the Chocolate House.  Unfortunately we relied on Google maps to guide us there, not realising that there is also a shop called the Belgian Chocolate House that Google decided was where we wanted to go.  Luckily with the old town being quite small, it was only a five minute walk to the real Chocolate House where we enjoyed a Hotchocspoon.  It's a novel idea, but a bit of a pain if we're totally honest since hot, hot milk and young kids is not a brilliant combination!

Paloma enjoying her ride in the sling.

The view of the Pont Adolphe.

Paloma fell asleep on the way to the restaurant.

But soon woke up when food started arriving.

Having read that there was a kid friendly tapas restaurant on the outskirts of the city, but well placed near the tram line, we headed back to Place de l'Étoile via the famous view of the Adolphe Bridge to catch the tram.  The reviews of El Barrio Restaurante y Tapas Bar where certainly correct, we enjoyed some very nice tapas although the chilli pepper that had snuck in with the Spanish Peppers caught me (Matt) out a little bit!  The restaurant were very apologetic, but that didn't help me get my taste buds back.

Starting the journey home.

All that was left was a tram-funicular-train-train-car journey back to the hotel, which sounds a lot but in total only took around an hour.  It was a very busy day, but since Luxembourg is a city you're likely to only visit once, we wanted to see as much as we possibly could.

Blogged by Matt and Amber.