Day sixty nine

Echternach and Esch sur-Sûre

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/irenewheatley/EchternachForestWalk?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/irenewheatley/EschSurSure?feat=directlink

Two medieval towns, one near the north east border with Germany, the other north west of Luxemburg City, both gave us a days’ fresh air outing. Both were hell through Luxemburg City. No-one we asked offered any alternative to driving through the city. On morning one, we made it just past the old part when a parked moving van distracted Howard. All the traffic in front simply took over the next lane to move past, Howard was worried about oncoming traffic when he almost loaded us into the van. I have now almost perfected my sitting attitude of leaning into him to avoid being mangled when the inevitable (to me) happens and he pastes my side of the car onto a stationary object. Luxemburg City also plays tricks with its signage. You can be driving in the pointed direction and go right past a huge contradictory sign in the middle of an intersection. Anyway, yesterday we followed the road in, through and out through the new city which is swish, both sides of Avenue John F. Kennedy about 200m apart. You would need transport to get from one side of the street to the other. The rest of our drive out to Echternach easy by comparison as only a few roadworks to negotiate. The town is apparently a well known tourist trap, but we went there for the walking tracks and the one we chose, a loop of nearly 13k through a long gorge of weird and interesting rock and stone formations, lots of up-hill, babbling brooks and forest, with the return loop a forest path with a steep descent back into the town. The drive home was calmer, we found a city bypass, noted it and resolved to use it in future. We stopped at a massive highway service centre where cars and trucks were lining up to refill, then driving up to pay booths (about 6 on our side of the highway). That was another eye-opener!

This morning we came in on a different off ramp because a truck was obscuring the bypass sign and we did a few city circuits trying to get out towards Esch S-S. Once again misleading signs, but some inventive driving got us going in the right direction. Today was Howard’s turn to crouch towards me as I avoided oncoming traffic. Getting out to E-S-S wasn’t going to be easy as there were no pointers and we, along with almost everyone else in Luxemburg were being taken through heavy roadworks in outer suburbs and villages. Eventually we met a brand new highway and suddenly the going was so much easier. Near E-S-S we came upon some signs and before we knew it, we were there. E-S-S is a small village overlooked by the crumbling walls of a castle. We lunched, did the climb, walked around and happily prepared for the journey home with more creative driving by Howard to avoid the long snake of slow moving traffic and with just a couple of turns and a false start, we joined the highway out of town and knew we’d outsmarted the city planners!

We’re having a lazy evening now, tomorrow we head for Amsterdam for 2 nights, then Brussels for 3 nights. Meanwhile we continue to watch BBC News for developments on the Iceland Volcanic Cloud and how our flight to New York on 3 May may be affected.

Cheers to all our family and friends, hope all is well in your respective corners of the world