A Little Treasure in Our Own Backyard (Kinda)

Where did Harry go this weekend? Two clues: this country starts with an “L,” and is right next to Metz. Think you know what country he visited? Read the blog to find out!

Posted by Harry

With the semester over in just under 4 weeks, I have begun to see some slight problems I was running into. The first was that the places on my bucket list (e.g. Spain, Iceland, Denmark, etc.) were getting a little far and difficult to travel to. The second of which was that my wallet was running a little dry. Next week, I’ve already planned a pretty epic hunting-of-sorts trip mixed in with a bit of nerdiness (stay tuned!), so this weekend was going to be a little more relaxed. I spent much of the weekend catching up on work and even getting ahead in preparation of what was going to come. One thing though, I did end up finding a little treasure of a hiking trail(s) nearby Metz in an area known as the “Little Switzerland” of Luxembourg.

To get to Luxembourg is about an hour’s train ride. From there, you take another hour bus to Echternach, a little commune in Luxembourg where much of the Mullerthal Trail runs from.

Photo courtesy of mullerthal-trail.lu.

As you can see from the map above, there’s plenty of trails to hike in this area. My friends and I just did a short day hike on Saturday to break up our workdays. The actual distances of each of the three trails are over 20 miles each, but we followed a shorter loop that let us hit the lake near the town and then parts of trails 1 and 2.

The trails weren’t too hard, and it just offered a lot of fresh air when you’re submerged in a forest and get to see parts of Luxembourg that you ordinarily wouldn’t see. It was a great way to spend a day, and would recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a simple and close (and cheap!) day trip. Even though two hours isn’t exactly in Metz’s backyard, it can seem that way when a majority of the places you’ve been to have been 6+ hours away!