It’s only a tiny but we’ve spent the past couple of days lost in Luxembourg.  It was never on the to do list but I’m so happy we decided to explore this mini country. Wedged between France, Belgium and Germany, it is a curious mixture of all of them.  It took us a while to work out what the spoken language was, until someone pointed out it was actually Luxembourgish, which gives it a unique identity of its own.  I won’t get bogged down in Luxembourg details but those that love facts can dig deeper with the Wiki link here.

The country is a fascinating mix of rolling green hills, and modern urban areas.  Tractors and electric buses share the roads in equal measure.  And speaking of buses, all public transport is free in Luxembourg which is why we took a train into Luxembourg City from our base in Ettelbruck yesterday.  It was a day of firsts for Chloe who took a train ride, funicular railway, bus journey and pounded the streets of a European capital. She’s also upped our food budget when we noticed she was losing weight and we needed to double her food intake.

We weren’t planning on heading into the capital and our last-minute decision brought its own problems when my phone ran out of battery.  It had been used as a sat nav earlier in the day and a hotspot for Kerry’s phone all morning and as soon as we got off the train it died, so just like in the old backpacking days we had to survive with our wits and a map in a foreign language.  I’d forgotten how much time we spent lost back in the day. 

I’m writing this in Remich which is on the border with Germany, we accidentally found ourselves in another wine region, this time the Moselle Valley.  We’re parked up for the night tucked between vineyards and the Moselle River.  There’s not much I can tell you about Remich except that it’s whole main street is nothing but petrol stations. If France is anything to go by then petrol is twenty cents a litre more expensive over the border and any self-respecting German is heading straight to Luxembourg for their fuel.  Also, their mini golf course was listed in a brochure we picked up ‘100 Things to do in Luxembourg’, it was definitely in the top two shittest mini golf courses I’ve ever played at. Come on Luxembourg, you’re better than that.

Next stop for us is straight to the petrol station tomorrow morning for a bit of cheap diesel before France again… we think.