Esch-Sauer has a very pretty setting at a river bend and showcases a photogenic castle ruin build on a rocky hill. You can climb up there in 10 min via some stairs and enjoy the beautiful view of the surroundings.
We were completely alone at the old castle ruin, below us the snowy landscape. There was definitely a magic feel to it! 🙂
The rest of Esch-Sauer is explored quickly: The village itself only consists of a couple of roads. In addition to that, everything was deserted – we probably saw 3 other people. Ghost city? Are they only opening up in summer? Where is everyone? It was a bit odd and actually should remain the same in all small towns and villages of Luxembourg.
We drove 20 min further to reach Bourscheid. A castle in the middle of nowhere (most of them are in or near a village – here it is located directly on the side of the country road). It was nice, but we weren’t really in the mood to visit the inside. I guess we have seen too many castles by now and somehow it’s mostly the same! 😉
Hence we continued our drive to another castle – the most beautiful one of the country, as they say. The castle of Vianden is located at the edge of the village with the same name and again very photogenic. In addition to that there was a really nice evening light (around 16.00 – winter), which painted the sky pink. Since unfortunately 16.00 was also the closing time we again didn’t see the castle from the inside 😉 But I don’t know, somehow I don’t need that! I actually prefer to view it from the outside, with the nice surroundings, compared to walking through old knights‘ halls and looking at dark portrait paintings on the walls…
We had to hurry up a bit afterwards to get to our hotel before the dark. We were sleeping a little outside of Luxembourg City in Strassen since this is much cheaper and the bus to the city is for free on weekends anyways. We actually liked Strassen since we twice had really good dinner here: Once the best Indian food we ever had (until now – we still need to visit India itself), and once Italian.
Next day, we first wanted to drive through the valley of the 7 castles, but somehow that wasn’t too spectacular. It’s really more castle RUINS in the true sense of the word. Many were also closed due to restoration etc. Oh well, not that amazing.
Ticked off and on to Luxembourg City! Here we spent the next couple of hours strolling through (almost) all the streets and over all the little squares the city had to offer. The city is really very small! What we liked best was the walk along the Corniche. From there, you had wonderful views from the higher part of the city to the lower part – and also of the different bridges which are leading from one end of the valley to the other one.
We of course also visited the big cathedral which is really quite pretty:
But – after 2 h we were kind of „done“ 😉 If you don’t feel like visiting museums, there is just not that much to see. Of course, we could have gone up to the EU/financial center, but somehow we were not that interested in walking around in a deserted area (Saturday!) between skyscrapers. So we ended up bar-hopping for a bit and then went back to Strassen for dinner (way to expensive directly in the city!).
On our next (and last) day we had planned to go hiking! Luxembourg has a well-known hiking trail, the Mullerthal trail. It actually consists of 3 circles which can be done over multiple days with overnights in smaller villages along the way. Of course we didn’t have that much time so we informed ourselves beforehand which part of the trail is the nicest. This resulted in a circular walk from Echternach (almost) until Berdorf and back again. Once you have found the start, everything is sign-posted very well and easy to find.
The trail first led us to a little view point, and afterwards through the snowy forest for a long time. Slowly, there were some interesting rock formations appearing, which looked really cool!! Especially the Wolf Gorge really impressed us. The trail leads directly through steep rock faces and you can walk on a little bridge above the gorge. Really pretty! We had enough to look at and time passed quickly. Only the way back was a bit more boring, so I would recommend to take the bus from Berdorf back to Echternach. In total, we walked around 12-14 km, in about 3,5 h. It was a beautiful trek and successful end to our time in Luxembourg!
Just Booked A Trip 