This was our road trip day. Andy and I love to take road trips in the USA, but haven’t had the chance to do a multi country route in Europe! Today was our day! We picked up our car rental – and were on our way around 8:00 AM.

Google maps wasn’t updated with all of the road construction – so we got turned around a few times. We finally made it out of town and we had a feeling it was smooth sailing from there.

And we were mostly right, until we got to Luxembourg City. Where we realized the two parking lots we had looked up were full. There was a second museum I had planned on stopping at if we had time – it was further outside of the city center. We took a gamble, got there and immediately found parking. There had been a very interesting fort that looked cool in pictures, so we had decided to stop there (and not go into the museum).

Once we walked up we realized that it was free! Just our luck! We took a few pictures outside and walked around inside. We quickly realized that most of the plaques were not in English – and I’m a nerd about reading EVERYTHING in a museum. This expedited our time at this museum. When we were walking out, we took a chance at asking the worker about calling us a taxi.

She kept insisting that the tram station was nearby. We really didn’t want to pay for train tickets – we didn’t know the schedule – and we were tight on time. It looked like rain again – so Andy had run back to the car to grab the umbrella. After I started researching I realized that in the City of Luxembourg ALL public transportation was free. Brilliant! No wonder why this woman was looking at us like we were crazy – why pay for something that is free?! And as it turns out, extremely convenient.

We made it to the downtown area – and landed on a restaurant that was nearby the House of Underwear. As luck would have it, the skies opened up again – and thankfully we were inside the restaurant this time. After finishing up lunch we started our walk to the Museum of Luxembourg City. We knew we really only had 40 minutes (which is not enough time) – so we hurried over. However, I noticed on the map that there was a Cathedral Notre-Dame.

Mass was not in session so we quickly stopped to admire the stained glass and the nave and continued on our way.

The Museum of Luxembourg City would have been great to stick around for longer, but again – we were power walking through the different floors. It only cost 6 euro, so we didn’t feel that bad for power walking through it.

We had a tasting reservation 30 minutes outside of the city at Caves St. Martin. They specialize in sparkling wine (yay!) and primarily white wines. The tasting room and cave are a stones throw away from Germany – just across the Moselle river. We had booked the prestige tour – and we made it just in time. It wasn’t supposed to be a private tour, but we were the only two that showed up.

We got to learn more about how this facility makes their wine – and honestly, we learned a lot. At the end, we got popped out into the tasting room where we could indulge. I had forgotten that they had included an “appetizer” which turned out to be a rather large charcuterie board for each of us. (Wish we hadn’t had such a big lunch!)

Our tour guide left – she had another group. However, the gal working in the tasting room was amazing. She had moved to Luxembourg last year to study viticulture. She was trying to head to New Zealand next but was figuring out a plan for her visa. She shared with us that Luxembourg has the cheapest alcohol, gas, coffee, and cigarettes in the region. They don’t tax these goods as much – so a bottle of amazing sparkling wine came to about 8 euro.

Andy had to talk me out of buying a case there. This was only our first winery of the trip after all!

After leaving Caves St. Martin we headed to Germany – we got to drive through the countryside of Germany for about an hour before entering Belgium again. We were heading through another storm (so much rain on this trip!) and caused for some slow conditions.

We were heading to Valkenburg in the Netherlands. And our sleepiness was catching up to us, we decided that we would cross the border into the Netherlands and head back to our Airbnb in Brussels. We had looked up a few things to do there – which we will save for another trip in the future.

We had a hard time finding a gas station that would accept our credit card – I think we finally found one on the 3rd or 4th time. Still not sure why it was an issue, but at this point we were exhausted. We made it back to Brussels around 8 PM – right around 12 hours of being on the road! (With lots of fun mixed in!)

We headed back to our Airbnb and started organizing and packing up our suitcases. As we were heading back to Paris the next morning.

As I was laying down to fall asleep I realized I had missed an email earlier in the evening due to the gas station debacle. Our 8:43 AM train was cancelled. I quickly hopped on to look for the next earliest train – and glad that I did, because other travelers were in the same boat and many of the trains were selling out.

The type of ticket we had bought entitled us to a free exchange – but of course, by the time I read the email the Call Center was closed. I booked an 11:13 AM train – and we are still hoping that they reimburse us for the new tickets. (128 euros more than our previous tickets!)

The trip has already had some ups and downs – hoping that the rest truly is smooth sailing!

Up Next:
-Halle Gate
-Train to Paris
-Meet up with Jon and Yvonne
-Paris activities – TBD!