Luxembourg with a side of Belgium

Europe has a lot of "one and onlys" ... this time we visited the world's only sovereign Grand Duchy, Luxembourg. Actually, our first stop was in Belgium, since you pretty much have to drive through most of it to get to Luxembourg. There's a lot of war history in this area; we stopped to see some in the Belgian town of Bastogne. A pleasant little town, it was a crucial spot in the Battle of the Bulge. To commemorate, the Mardasson Memorial sits just outside of town. It's an impressive monument even on a rainy day.


Pictured (click to enlarge): Mardasson Memorial


Then it was off through the rain to the Luxembourg town of Grevenmacher. If the name sounds German, it's because it's right on the border of Germany on the Mosel river. Actually, you're never far from a border in Luxembourg (Belgium, Germany, or France). That's probably why the residents all seem to speak French, German, and their own language (Luxembourgish, a strange combination that sounds like there's some dutch in there too) interchangeably. A quick check in wiki shows that the country is indeed trilingual, and most could speak good English as well.



Grevenmacher has a butterfly garden with many beautiful butterflies as well as the occasional lurking chameleon and a group of chicks that Rochelle was obsessed with but refused to sit still for a picture.



Most people outside of the area probably don't know that this region is known for wine production, in particular cremant (the poor man's champagne). What a surprise that we would visit! After a few stops the trunk was full and we were off to the city of Luxembourg (yes -- Luxembourg, Luxembourg).



Regional artwork: now, if only these fountains spouted real wine...

Just outside of the city are war cemeteries for both Americans and Germans. These are always moving sights. The American cemetery is resting place for over 5,000 soldiers and General George S. Patton. The German cemetery has over 10,000 soldiers; most are in a mass grave.


Pictured: top-American cemetery bottom-German cemetery

The city of Luxembourg is unique; divided up by high cliffs and deep ravines; the geography creates some nice views. The center is compact and easy to walk around. We stayed right around the corner from the palace, but there didn't seem to be a lot of activity there. Luxembourg is Europe's culture capital for 2007, and when we were there the main event was a gathering of drum corps. Everywhere we went we saw (heard!) small drum groups, some playing on stages but most kind of walking around performing. Mostly around our hotel. Late at night. It was fun, but luckily we're heavy sleepers.



Pictured: Luxembourg views, Duke's Palace, Night Drumming

Driving home, we decided to get off the motorway in Belgium and take some side roads for a while. This turned out to be a good decision for a couple of reasons. First, we found a really nice wine store in the middle of nowhere. The friendly owner helped us fill our trunk even further. Second, we stopped at a Carrefour grocery store. Dutch grocery stores are much smaller, and it was nice to stop in a big store with such a huge selection for a change. Third, we discovered that the region along the Meuse river is very pretty and scenic. We picked up some strawberries from a roadside stand and stopped for a picnic. A great way to finish a nice quick trip.

Pictured: along the Meuse river

Next post: Week of July 1

Off to Chelsea

Since we landed in The Netherlands last year, Rochelle has been waiting for her chance to go to one of the huge garden shows in the UK. So we hopped over to London to go to the biggest of the big, the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Garden Show. Rochelle's even a member of the RHS even though we don't live in the UK. The weather was anything but spectacular this trip, but luckily the clouds parted on Friday, the day we went to the show.

We decided that we wanted a different view of London, so we took the advice of friends and stayed outside of the city in Richmond-Upon-Thames. Only about 30 minutes by tube, Richmond is a very casual river town, with a very nice pub & restaurant scene. We flew in Thursday morning and spent the rest of the day pretty much just strolling around town. It was off-and-on cloudy but at least not raining. For more about Richmond visit the photoblog.

We loved the name of this wine store in Richmond.

How british can you get ... watching an evening of cricket from a Richmond pub.

In order to try to beat the crowds, we headed out early for Chelsea and made it there right at opening time. Even then it was pretty populated; I found that I didn't take very many garden pictures, because you couldn't get a shot without a ton of people in it. The shots below don't do the gardens justice ... click the links for full descriptions. Rochelle's favorite garden was the Linnaeus garden -- she does tend to like whites & blues (click the link to see why there was a tribute to Linnaeus). My favorite was the Fetzer garden, not because they are a former client of mine, but because I liked the way they recreated a California style garden, especially the real vines and the cool bat house. We both liked the Cancer Research garden with its wood sculpture.

Pictured (click to enlarge): Linnaeus, Fetzer, and Cancer Research gardens

By 10-10:30 or so the legendary crowd was in full force. We finished looking at the displays in the pavilion, then took a walk through some more of the outside commercial exhibits. We tried our first Pimm's cocktail and decided it must be an acquired taste. So we headed for an early lunch at the Laurent-Perrier/Loch Fyne champagne/seafood restaurant. We tried unsuccessfully to find a boat launch from the area, and ended up heading back to Richmond for the evening.

Pictured: midday crowds at Chelsea

Saturday & Sunday were miserably rainy, so we decided to skip our planned visit to the Kew Garden and head into the city. On Saturday we shopped on Oxford Street (it seemed almost as crowded as the flower show) and took a boat ride on the Thames during a break in the rain. We visited the British Museum, which is very rich in history/archaeology. Sunday we headed in to the Tate Modern. Before we know it we were back on the train to Gatwick and taking off for home. Hopefully we'll make it to one of the other big shows while we're living in Europe.

Pictured: (L) From our boat tour, a view of the HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge.

(R) The Millennium Bridge (click the link to read about its interesting history), looking from the Tate Modern to St. Paul's (evidently this area is in the midst of a building boom!)

Dublin

The second part of our visit from Joan & Jim was a trip to Dublin. We chose to fly on RyanAir (cheap) out of Eindhoven, which is normally about 1 1/2 hours from our home. After a not-so-quick lunch in Gouda (the Dutch are not known for fast service, particularly when you are "terrassing"), we ended up in a horrible traffic jam. Turns out that Eindhoven was hosting a rally for their football team PSV, winners of the Dutch title. The result of missing our flight (barely!) was more time on the road, as our only option to get to Dublin was to fly out from Belgium.

Pictured: Obviously not Dublin ... this is a wedding at the historic stadhuis in Gouda

Leaving the Dublin airport, our cab driver was the definition of "the gift of the blarney." Our 40-minute ride was a lesson in Irish politics ... everything from the local elections to the European Union to immigration to the Spire of Dublin. It was interesting, to say the least (unlike our driver).

Luckily, Dublin is a very good city in which to drown your sorrows, or anything else for that matter. First stop was the Temple Bar pub. The Temple Bar area is the party central of Dublin -- it seems busy at all times of the day. All in all, we visited 13 pubs. You can even take one of the predefined pub crawls, like the Literary pub crawl where you visit pubs that were frequented by literary giants like Joyce, Beckett & Wilde. One of the most interesting in terms of looks was Kehoe's; many of the fixtures were old (including the urinals in the basement). One of the most interesting in terms of people was the Hairy Lemon; we had a great conversation with the bartender & they had some good tunes on the jukebox.

Pictured: Kehoe's Pub

We decided to take the open-air tour to get an overview of the sights. Dublin's city center is fairly compact and it doesn't seem as big as most other European capitals. We split the tour between two days, and it was a great way to see the sights like St. Patrick's Cathedral (pictured below).

One of the tour stops was the Guinness Storehouse (pictured below). It's a multi-level, multimedia experience that takes you through the history of Guinness and the brewing process. The tour culminates with a cold pint in the "Gravity Bar" with a great view of the city.

To give ourselves a bit of a break from the city, we took the train out to the fishing village of Howth. It definitely feels different than Dublin, with its row of fisheries, abbey ruins, and WWII. After lunch at the Abbey Pub, we trained to to visit the Malahide castle. I don't think I can adequately describe the tour of the castle. It is semi self-guided ... after a brief introduction a woman plays recordings in each room. Jim described the woman running our tour as "Aunt Clara" ... if you're familiar with (the original) Bewitched you might know what he meant. Let's just say that the timing of the tour was a little off. Then when we went outside we ran into a horde of bees ... evidently two rival nests were fighting it out, much like it might have been hundreds of years ago when the castle had to defend itself.

Pictured (click to enlarge): Howth



Pictured: Malahide castle (click to enlarge; the "spots" on the 2nd photo are bees)

Saturday morning brought an early flight ... we thought that we'd find an empty airport at 5AM. To our surprise it was completely packed ... the following Monday was a bank holiday and it seemed like everyone was getting out of town. After a stop in Leuven, Belgium, it was back home for a quiet dinner, and Sunday morning Joan & Jim were back on a plane to Chicago. We had a great time and look forward to our next visitors. Thanks again to Jim for contributing to the photos.

Queen's Day 2007

Our friends Joan & Jim flew in from Chicago for a week's holiday, starting with a few nights in Amsterdam to celebrate the Queen's Day holiday. Prior to the actual holiday, we spent a couple of days roaming the streets of Amsterdam. If you've ever been here or you know anything about the city you know that there's more than enough to keep you busy ('nuf said). The city was busy as usual, but you could call it downright tranquil compared to what was about to happen on Monday. This post contains many pics, so click on photos to enlarge -- pictured: pre-party lounging along a canal; decorated boat; lonely (but not for long) beer tap.

Between our boat tour and just walking around, we saw quite a few interesting sights. You can really see the city getting ready for the party ... balloons and decorations of all types all over the place. Some red/white/blue but mostly orange. We looked on in amazement as a group of guys were tying ribbons across the street between the pubs and stores ... in order to steady the ladder on the uneven street, they used the advanced method of cardboard beer coasters! They were very confident (or it might have been the beer that they were drinking as they performed this dangerous task).

Although we've never been, we think the closest thing in the US would be Mardi Gras. The party starts early -- when we walked out on Monday morning, the streets were already crowded and people were literally streaming in from the train station. The streets get so packed, especially near the canals and the main squares, that you can barely move.

The party really starts with the street sales. People all over the city put out their junkiest wares hoping that someone is already drunk enough to buy them (they are). Also, it's a chance for people to make money in strange ways; kids playing instruments (some better than others), pie-in-the-face, and so forth. We even saw people peddling hugs and the right to pet their dogs.

There's entertainment all around the city, but our favorite activity of the day was watching the canal boat parade. The boats quickly turned from a trickle to a steady stream. There's everything from two-person motorboats to floating "decks" of people. Each one has its own sound system -- the bigger ones actually have DJs and some had brass bands! The really good ones get the crowd going -- someone on one rocking boat threw a bottle of wine to Rochelle (it's like they knew us)! One of the boats was even broadcasting for MTV. Sometimes the crowd watching the parade was as entertaining as the boat parade itself.

Sadly, the sun and excitement (not to mention liquid refreshments) led to an early end to the day for Rich & Rochelle. Even though we got an early start I'd be embarrassed to say what time we were back in our hotel room. Joan & Jim managed to stay out quite a bit later. We're amazed at how orderly the holiday is ... despite all of the partying, it begins and ends early, and people seem relatively well-behaved. Next year, if we don't have any visitors, we'll have to see how it's done outside of Amsterdam.

We're posting more Queen's Day pics daily for about a week on our daily photo blog; check it out at www.wassenaardailyphoto.blogspot.com. And look for our next post on the 2nd half of our trip with Joan & Jim (the party continues in Dublin) in two weeks. Thanks also to Jim for contributing some great shots to the pics.