The first weekend of the semester I had nothing planned going into the week. That wasn’t really what I had in mind for the start of the semester, but I wasn’t going to let anything hold me back from going somewhere new and having a weekend to remember!
I had to think that I wasn’t the only GTL student in this situation, so I turned to the GTL Facebook group and found other students that still didn’t have anything planned for the weekend. After a few of us had gotten together, the plans started to form. Since most of us still didn’t have a Eurail pass, we wanted to go somewhere on our list of countries that had cheap train tickets available for the weekend. One of my groupmates found roundtrip tickets to Luxembourg for 17€ and we were off for a day trip.
After a quick train ride we were in Luxembourg. Our first stop was the Notre Dame Cathedral, a quick walk from the train station.
The cathedral was filled with beautiful stained glass windows and detailed architectural sculptures. We walked around the cathedral admiring the artistry in the architecture, the murals on the walls, and the stories told in the stained glass.
After spending some time there we decided to head to the palace. Unfortunately, the palace wouldn’t start tours of the inside until vacation season starts in Europe in mid-summer. While we were there we stumbled upon a festival of sorts happening. It happened to be the day that Luxembourg celebrated Europe Day. We got a chance to walk around from booth to booth, each representing a different country in Europe. Each booth had material on tourist attractions in their country as well as some traditional foods and drinks. Even though this part of the day was unplanned it was a great opportunity to learn more about the other countries in Europe and where we wanted to go further in the summer.
The rest of the day we walked from attraction to attraction around Luxembourg. We went to the Casemates du Bock, were we saw the catacombs and the wall that once protected Luxembourg.
Casemates du Bock
We walked from the top of the Casemates du Bock down cobblestone ramps and winding stairs to the bottom of the valley to see the small creek that flowed through one of the small fields of flowers there.
Afterwards we headed across the valley to what remains of Fort Thüngen. Here we got the best view of Luxembourg and we spent a lot of time just enjoying the view, company, and good weather.
This was a great way to finish our first day of traveling at GTL. We returned to Metz and were excited to continue our summer traveling to new places and meeting new people.
