Around the Rhine
Day 7: Luxembourg
Moving day. Today we were scheduled to be sailing through the heart of the German Rhine, admiring the view of medieval castles and Riesling vineyards. Instead, we were getting our luggage packed and ready for pickup at the unfriendly hour of 6:30 a.m. Soon after, we were on a tour bus, driving a long way away from the AmaStella and the Rhine.
Today’s route: a bus ride from Strasbourg to Luxembourg City, then on to Antwerp, Belgium, where we boarded a nearly identical cruise ship for a late-night trip to Rotterdam.
We had a comfortable if uneventful ride through the Alsace and Lorraine regions, past an autumnal pastiche of farmland, small forests and scattered villages. Modern windmill towers turned slowly in the smoky distance against a flat white sky.
After a couple of hours, we arrived at a truck stop for a short break. There is a very specific kind of misery that is the arrival of a cruise ship full of passengers at a single convenience store and cafe, with just a couple of bathrooms and coin-operated stalls, after hours of bus travel. We brought this experience in full to the Shell station in Longeville-lès-Saint-Avold, France. We shuffled through the throng inside, fumbling for coins for toilets and coffee, then escaped back out to the freezing November morning to wait for the rest.
Returning to the road, we continued north for another hour or so — a blur of amber leaves and spindly branches; clusters of deep-green pines studded with shocks of bright beeches; and bold, black-and-white dots of grazing Holstein Friesian dairy cattle.
The bus stopped in the center of Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg, where we were given about an hour to find lunch before a brief city tour. I had scouted several good restaurants while on the bus, but the first spot we tried had closed permanently. Short on time, we stepped into a nearby hotel and asked for recommendations for a good French restaurant. But the man at the front desk said he didn’t really care for French food, and offered no further assistance. We puzzled on this for a moment — perhaps he would suggest some other cuisine, or ask a co-worker. But no, he quickly turned away to another task, satisfied with his answer: We wanted a recommendation for French cuisine. He does not like French cuisine. Finis.
Stressed by the shortage of time, I sped through options in Google Maps, pinching in and out on my phone, tapping to see the review scores or photos, while the others waited. I found another spot a couple blocks away, but it had moved to the other side of town. Bad luck had overcome my improvisational travel skills. We turned around to see another well-rated place, Matelots Brasserie Fine Bretonne, featuring the cuisine of Brittany.
The lunchtime specialty at Matelots is the Breton galette, a buckwheat pancake folded over and filled with various savory delicacies — in this case, an egg, Emmanthal cheese, ham or sausage, and perhaps mushrooms and onions. The dishes are made with considerable artistry by the cheerful young couple who run the Matelots, both in execution of the galette and in the individual flourishes of sauce design and fresh flowers on the plate. Paired with a fantastic La Chouffe Belgian ale — lighter than many Belgian beers, but still full of flavor — it was a perfect way to refresh after a long bus ride.
We walked over to Place Guillaume II — named after King William II of the Netherlands, who was also the ruling Grand Duke of Luxembourg — where some of us started a city tour with a local guide while the rest took the hour for some shopping.
Luxembourg is one of the smaller countries in the world, with only 998 square miles of territory. As with Alsace in France, the country has consistently found itself at the crossroads of numerous competing national interests, its strategic fortress occupied in turn by the Holy Roman Empire, House of Burgundy, Hapsburg Netherlands, French and Spanish kings, and Prussia. In the past 360 years, Luxembourg has lost about 70% of its original size, with land claimed in the south by France (1659) and in the east by Prussia/Germany (1815), plus a chunk in the northwest ceded when Belgium gained full independence from the Netherlands (1839).
The start of the tour at Rathaus, or City Hall, built in 1838 using materials from a former monastery nearby.
The three official languages in this nexus of central Europe are French, German, and Luxembourgish, a High German language from the French Moselle region with more than 5,000 words originating in French. It’s what the locals speak to one another, and is used in parliamentary debates, but most of the government and legal system is conducted in French. The largest newspaper in the country is the German-language Luxemburger Wort, and papers frequently print stories in French alongside stories in German. It is not a coincidence that, like Strasbourg, Luxembourg has played a major role in the founding and administration of the European Union and is one of the four capitals of the EU.
Our short tour focused on the city center and fortifcations of Luxembourg City — a UNESCO World heritage Site since 1994. We began with a stop at Kathedral Notre-Dame (in Luxembourgish), originally a Jesuit church and the only cathedral in the country. Built between 1613-21 and expanded several times since, it feels much larger on the inside than the area it seems to occupy from outside. The Baroque church now has a neo-Gothic interior, with high columns and vaulted ceilings. Below, the modern crypt contains the remains of Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses of Luxembourg from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The tour then led to a small square featuring a bronze statue of Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg from 1919-1964, her arm extended gracefully in a gesture of compassion and authority. Charlotte came to power when her sister, Marie-Adélaïde, abdicated after being perceived as a supporter of the German occupation in World War I. For her part, Charlotte fled for France when Germany invaded in World War II, then escaped to Portugal and finally to Great Britain. She refused a German offer to return to the throne under their terms and instead conducted broadcasts to the people of Luxembourg from exile.
We continued downhill through the old city center’s cobblestone streets to the tiny Chemin de la Corniche, a small path atop Luxembourg City’s massive fortified wall overlooking the Alzette River. The skies had cleared following the gray morning bus ride, and now the autumn sun cast long shadows across the valley, bringing sharp relief to the 17th century Neumünster Abbey along the river and the tidy town behind it. The still river reflected the arch of an old stone bridge above, closing it into a perfect oval. To our side, emergency workers practiced rappelling down the side of the fortress wall.
Built on a rocky promontory by the first Counts of Luxembourg in the 10th century, the legendary fortress — occasionally referred to as the “Gibralter of the North” — was never taken by force. To help ease tensions between France and Prussia, it was largely dismantled beginning in 1867 when Luxembourg was declared a neutral territory in the Second Treaty of London. But it’s remaining sheer wall and several outposts attest to its historic might.
We circled back around Église Saint-Michel — a 17th century Roman Catholic church built on the site of a church from 987 — and then walked toward the city’s smart shopping streets. Luxembourg City consistently ranks amongst the world’s most livable cities, and the country is the second richest in the world per capita. After a period of industrialization led by the steel industry, Luxembourg has become a center for banking and financial services, and is considered one of the top tax havens in the world. This reputation has lured Amazon and other companies to move their regional headquarters to Luxembourg
We ended our tour at Palais Grand-Ducal, the residence of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Henri Albert Gabriel Félix Marie Guillaume, and his family. Originally Luxembourg’s first city hall between 1572-1795, the elegant structure became the home of the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses in 1890. Its location today across from a series of shops seems quaint, well-integrated with the city and its people, a proper placement for the home of a constitutional monarch in a representative democracy.
I continued further down the pedestrian streets to Place d’Armes, a large central square where workers were — you guessed it — setting up for a Christmas market. A busker sat on the curb, playing a drum solo with considerable skill on plastic paint buckets, tiny cymbals, and an overturned frying pan. This was entertaining for about 8 seconds, then just became relentless background noise as I attempted to collect the shoppers in our group via text messages.
We made it back to the bus and rode for another two and a half hours. The skies began to darken over the rolling hills as we skirted Brussels to the east. We arrived in Antwerp at night, just catching an illuminated glimpse of the beautiful Cathedral of Our Lady, an enormous Roman Catholic church from 1352. We boarded our new ship, the AmaKristina, and pulled away from port quickly, like a group making a stealthy escape from a crime under the cover of darkness.
After dinner, we watched a handful of brave souls take part in Disco Night in the lounge — maintaining a safe distance at all times — as the AmaKristina headed west into the North Sea, bound for Rotterdam.