Luxembourg: City of Dreams

Are you in Europe and looking for a nice weekend get-away? Are you really into stairs? Do you love yourself? 

If the answer to any of these questions is “YESSS!” then Luxembourg, Luxembourg is the city for you! 

My dear blog readers, I just got back from such a wonderful weekend in Luxembourg with my Belgian friend, Michael. 

I really don’t know where to start this blog because I am so in love with the world this morning that I just don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about anything because everything seems sparkly and beautiful.

I just spent the weekend exploring a city that used to be a fortress and talking and talking and talking with a friend who understands my mind AND still wants to spend time with me hahaha. When I talk so much to someone, it is hard for me to get the right amount of time to process my thoughts and emotions. I spend so much time alone (or with a French-speaking five-year-old) in Paris and because of that, I am used to having a lot of time (almost too much time) to myself to reflect on what I think about what has been going on around me or just wonder about millions of other things. So, after spending a weekend of continuous conversation, my mind feels a little numb and blurry hahah. I am not super crazy and I love talking to people, but the thing about having conversations with Michael is that he makes me think a lot and it makes my brain tired.

Sooo, yes. This morning my brain feels kind of calm and tired and blurry but everything, even this rainy, cloudy day, seems lovely. 

BACK TO LUXEMBOURG.

I made Michael plan the trip. I figured he would do a better job than me, and also I knew I would be more fun to hang out with and less stressed if I had 0 expectations. 

To get to Luxembourg, I took three trains! This was my first time taking TGV trains alone and navigating myself through train stations. Before this trip, I never understood why Europeans prefer train-travel so much, but now it is so obvious! It is SO efficient and simple. It is also comfortable, relaxing, and pretty! I even made a friend on one of the trains! There was an elderly woman sitting next to me and we started talking and found ourselves very interested in each others lives. She told me about her grandchildren and her Canadian husband. She said that he was studying in France for a year when they met and fell completely in love and now they have a beautiful family together. I love these kinds of stories, but I what I loved best of all was how after telling me this, she said “Wow! That was forty years ago, already. I have so enjoyed my life. Make sure you enjoy yours, okay? It is so important!” Her name was Beatrice, and she agreed to take a selfie with me to put on my blog after I told her that she had very much inspired me and that I do not want to forget about her. :)

When I arrived in Luxembourg, Michael was waiting at the train station. Right away, we took off on our well thought-out adventure. Michael had made a document on his iPad, yes, THAT is how organized he was for this trip hahah. While we walked along, he even played tour guide! Some of my favorite parts of the trip were when he messed up his tour guiding, though hahah. For instance, when we first started walking to a park that we were going to hike through a bit, he said that we should come across a river soon, but when we got there, there was only this suuuuper tiny stream hahaha. It was quite underwhelming and hilarious and we named it THE GREAT LUXEMBOURGISH RIVER or something along those lines. 

Now, before you ever go to Luxembourg, please do yourself a favor and understand how NOT flat it is. Michael and I spent most of the weekend walking up and down stairs and then occasionally resting on benches or in coffee shops when we got tired. The park that we first walked through was about 9 flights of stairs below the city center. It was a bit of a hike, but it was such a pretty one! Also, it was a beautiful day which made the trees and flowers look even nicer. We made our way to the city center so we could get a map at the tourism office, and then walked around the city for a bit before heading down a hill to explore some ruins. Before going to the ruins, we stopped and got coffee across the street from the Grand Duke’s Palace at a really cute chocolate cafe! 

Once we had our caffeine, we headed out of the city center where we walked along a big wall (which I liked to refer to as the West Cliff of Luxembourg) from which we could see the peaceful and quaint little canyon bellow. What I am choosing to call ruins aren’t really ruins, but old tunnels inside a big and really old wall. We spent a couple hours wandering through the wall we had been walking on top of before and finding little rooms with different views of the city. We quickly learned that a trip through Luxembourg is all about seeing the same view from different towers, windows, and heights hahah. It was really fun running around in that wall with Michael. He is as easily pleased and adventurous as I am when it comes to exploring walls, apparently. Inside the wall there were so many spiral staircases and dark little passages. We eventually found our way into down to the bottom of the wall and sat in the grass to rest our legs and shoulders for a bit and enjoy the sunshine. It was a nice little spot by the ACTUAL river hahah. 

After that, we decided to climb up the other side of the canyon to, you know, see the view from over there. It looked exactly the same except we were on the other side of the fiver hahaha. As it got later, we decided to head into town and choose a place to eat dinner. We got back to the city center and Michael started searching for restaurants that he had heard nice things about. I was very insistent about not spending a lot of money, so we walked to each of the restaruants to check the prices and see what seemed like the best deal. When nothing in the center seemed amazing, Michael had the idea to walk all the way back down the 456 thousand flights of stairs into the canyon and check out a typical “Luxembourgish” restaurant. When we got down there, however, most of the food contained meat and it was just as pricey as the other places, so we decided to walk back up the 567 thousand flights of stairs to the city center and go to a really cool looking Italian place we had spotted before. Complaining about the stairs became a fun thing for me to do while walking hahah. I didn’t actually mind them that much, but it was just such a ridiculously hilly city that I couldn’t help myself! The thing about our walks though were that they were all so pretty and I was in such fantastic company that complaining made me laugh! I enjoyed every second and every step! 

 

We worked up quite an appetite by the time we got to the restaurant, so when our food came out it felt like the best day of my life. I cannot express how much I ADORE eating food when I am hungry. But this was different because I was hungry AND it was really good food AND I was with Michael AND I was in freaking Luxembourg! 

After a long dinner, we headed down to the base of a different canyon to check into our hostel and drop off our bags before exploring a different part of the city on a night walk. Luxembourg felt so peaceful and safe at night, and it wasn’t even cold out and we didn’t have to carry our backpacks anymore so it was a very nice walk. 

We found our way over to a street that had lots of lights and loud music and a bunch of night clubs, and we sort of just strolled by like happy old grandparents hahah. While we were on our little night walk, I couldn’t help but thinking how lucky I was to have found a friend like Michael. As people, we have our differences, but our conversations just work so well and we understand each other on some strange level. I was happy to have a friend who wanted to walk by the noisy night clubs and have a conversation with me instead of go in them and get drunk and dance the night away. HOW DO I KEEP MEETING SUCH INCREDIBLE PEOPLE?!?! I am too lucky and it simply isn’t fair to all the people in the world who will never end up meeting the amazing people I know.

The next morning, we got up around 8 to take advantage of the free hostel breakfast that was served until 9. Neither of us slept very well because the German guy who was in our room kept moving and snoring and talking in his sleep hahaha so we were both a little less energetic than the day before. Breakfast was still nice though, and afterwards we got ready for another day full of walking and museums and Luxembougish things! The first thing we did was walk up a HUGE hill to check out a museum that Michael had been interested in. My legs were pretty sore from the day before, but walking up another big hill actually helped stretch them out a bit. The museum wasn’t open yet when we got there, but there were little ruins that we climbed around in for awhile while we waited for it to open. About ten minutes before the museum opened, we found a sunny cliff to sit on that overlooked all of Luxembourg, so we sat down and began to talk. An hour passed and we didn’t feel like leaving that perfect little cliff. And then another hour passed. And then another. I think we spent about 3 and a half hours up there, but it wasn’t a waste. It was where we wanted to be and it was beautiful! We stayed up there talking for so long that we ran out of time to go to the museums we had planned to go to, but we were so okay with it hahaha. 

We decided that Luxembourg is an underated country because it is so tiny and people never really dream of going there. It is now our job to go around telling everyone that Luxembourg is the COOLEST PLACE EVER and that EVERYONE needs to go there because it is the CITY OF DREAMS!

 

The only complaint I have about spending so much time up there is that it made the trip end quickly after that. We walked back down (and then up) the the city center to find somthing for lunch, got coffee, walked some fore through a different park, and then it was time to leave. We found our way back to the train station and said our goodbyes, and then all of a sudden I was on a train and the trip was over. I had been needing time to think alone for a lot of the weekend, but once Michael was gone I had to fight off the bummed feeling of not getting to enjoy his company anymore. I wished he was on the train with me so we could talk and laugh some more. I cheered myself up by reminding myself that we would hang out again in the future and his company would be just as fabulous as ever.

My thoughts were interrupted by a bit of a panick when, once the train had crossed the French border, I tried to turn on my French phone and it was completely dead and I realized I hadn’t taken my charger! This was a big deal because my plan was to take the train from Luxembourg to Metz and then use BlablaCar to get back to Paris. BlablaCar is a carpool system where you can pay to join drivers on their trip to a city you need to get to. The problem with my phone being dead was that I didn’t have a way to call Paul, the driver, and find a place to meet up with him! When I got to the Metz SNCF Station, I had no choice but to go up to the nicest looking lady at the train station and ask her ifI could borrow her phone. She was an ANGEL! Not only did she let me use her phone, but she walked me to where he said he would be to make sure he seemed safe and that I didn’t run into any other problems! This was such a sweet thing for her to do, but when I met Paul I realized there was absolutely nothing to be worried about! He was a super friendly 26 year old guy from Metz, and in the car were aslo his perfectly lovely girlfriend and another 22 year old BlablaCar user named Fanny. Riding in the car with them for three hours was such great French practice! They used what I like to call “young people French” so they sounded just like French teenagers in movies! I felt very safe the entire ride back to Paris, and it was a friendly and warm environment to be in, too! When we got into Paris, I was only a couple short metro rides away from home. I was sleepy when I got back to Asnieres, so I fell asleep quickly and happily, grateful to exist in a universe where Luxembourg and Michael and kind strangers also exist. 

That is probably why I woke up so happy this morning! Today it is rainy and Prune doesn’t have school and neither do I! I don’t have school because my last day of classes was last Friday, and Prune doesn’t have school because her teacher has something important to do (or something like that). So today started off with a morning of blogging and this afternoon, Prune and I will go find something fun to do in Paris! 

My last week of school (last week) was a good one. Our classes that week were on the canal, so every morning I had a prettier-than-usual walk to school. I will miss seeing the people from my class every morning, but I am okay with not going to French class anymore. I will still practice by reading and watching things in French and talking to Cecile and Fred and Anastazja all the time. I am not worried. This way I will also have time to enjoy my last little bit of time in Paris, so that is good! 

The last thing worth blogging about for this past week is how great things have been going with Prune. For some reason, the more and more we get to know each other, the more fun we have! I am not getting sick of her at all. In fact, sometimes she is the highlight an already fun day! I wanted to blog about her because I have some adorable pictures of her from this week hahaha. 

SHE LEARNED HOW TO WRITE MY NAME! :,)

 

A Simple Little Week

Oh my goodness it is BEAUTIFUL outside today and 70 degrees!!! I am going to write this blog post, but I am going to keep it short because all I want to do is go frolick around Paris in the rare sunshine hahaha. It has been pretty rainy this past week, but what a nice Sunday today will be! This will be the warmest day we’ve had so far this spring and I am pretty excited about it. :)

The last time I blogged was on Monday morning after my weekend in Budapest, but the rest of Monday deserves to be blogged about because it was “Easter Monday” in France which meant I was free to do what I pleased all day long! I spent the afternoon sipping coffee in my “blogging cafe” with Alessandra, my favorite Italian in Paris! I think I have mentioned this before, but I love spending time with Alessandra because, well, she is very sweet and funny and fun to hang out with, but also because we are forced to speak in French to communicate so we both get a lot of practice! After about two hours of talking and laughing and hiding away from the rain, we decided that we didn’t want to go home yet so instead we went to see a movie. We didn’t know what movies were playing, so we just went to the theater to watch whatever was playing next. We ended up seeing “Zootopie” which is a childrens movie and it was extremely entertaining! I was proud of us for understanding the little jokes in French hahah. I am glad we went and saw that movie together! That night I got home, ate some couscous, and skyped my family. I was still feeling a tiny bit sick, but I could tell that it was the end of my sickness so I went to bed hoping I would be well enough to run the next morning. 

The next morning, I woke up with so much energy and motivation to run that I could hardly focus on tying my shoes hahah. It had been like 10 days since I had gotten to get any sort of exercise, and I was soooo ready. I started on my normal loop to and through the park, but when I was half way through the park, I noticed another exit and decided to explore a little and see where it would take me. Aaaaaand it took me to ANOTHER PARK! A bigger park! So I happily ran around in that park for a little. When I decided it was time to go home, I couldn’t find the exit that I had used to get into the park, so I ran around until I found a different exit and took it. That is when I got extremely lost, and spent about 40 minutes running down random streets in my city until I found one I sort of recognized and then found my way home hahah. When I got home, I was exhausted from running for about an hour and a half, but I was so stoked about the new park I had found and I couldn’t wait to run it in again! 

The only other interesting thing that happened on Tuesday was that it started pouring when I went to pick up Prune from school so we decided to decorate cookies together and give them to her friends the next day at gym class. Prune is either getting a lot better at being my baking assistant, or I am getting a lot more patient. I cannot tell. But we had fun! 

Prune’s friends at gym class loved her cookies! When we passed them out on Wednesday morning, Prune definitely felt like the cool kid who made cookies and all the other kids were happy to be surprised with something sweet. The rest of my work day on Wednesday was normal, but after work I decided to do something different! When Cecile got home in the early afternoon and Prune was taking her nap, I took off to Paris with my laptop and poetry journal to spend a rainy afternoon in my little cafe. My Belgian friend, Michael (remember him?), likes to write short stories, and he had asked me to look at one of them and help edit it a little bit. I really enjoyed getting to help out a friend in a cute little rainy cafe on a Wednesday afternoon! It really was a lovely afternoon. When I was finished, I spent some time doing some writing myself before heading home. Once I was home, I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that Fred had ordered Japanese food which meant I got to eat yummy sushi for dinner! 

Thursday was, quite simply, not the best day. It rained ALL DAY LONG. And usually I like the rain, but this was a cold and steady rain and I had to do things like walk to school and then walk home and then walk the dog and then walk to get Prune from school, and I wasn’t very into that. But then a miracle happened; Cecile showed up at school when I did! We got into the warm car and went grocery shopping at the organic store, and then we spent some time driving around and looking at pretty houses hahah. It was a peculiar afternoon, but I was so happy to be in the car and not in the cold rain! 

Friday was a super happy day because I got to see a group of students from UHS who are doing a Europe Trip, and part of that group consisted of Sarah Teran and Charlie Luc(I dont know how spell his last name)! Sarah and Charlie and I got lunch together at a little French restaurant near the Opera and I cannot express how happy seeing them made me! I love those two so much! And they KNOW me! Catching up with them was so simple that it felt like I had never left, except that it kind of did feel like I had left because we mostly talked about my life in France hahah. I wasn’t super hungry, so I ordered a cheese platter and made them try French cheeses, which they were happy to do! Seeing their openness to this culture that I have grown to care about so dearly was very pleasing. They wanted to try everything! They would be such great exchange students, I think. After lunch, the idea was to try their first espresso, but we ran out of time. When we said goodbye, we made plans to meet up on Sunday aftertoon (which is this afternoon!) so I wasn’t sad. I felt so lucky to see them after such a long time. They really are amazing. This afternoon the plan is to go to the Catacombs together, and I am excited about that because I have never actually been! So that should be fun. 

Friday was also cool because I got to learn about the April Fools traditions in France! In France, children make little fish out of paper and stick them on peoples backs as a prank. That is about it. It is called “Poisson d’Avril” which means “Fish of April.” On Friday night, Prune and I were put in charge of making a vegetable soup so now I know how to make soup, too! 

Yesterday was Saturday, and that was a sweet day too. It was another Sally and Alessandra in Paris day! We met up after lunch (which I ate with Fred because Cecile wasn’t feeling well) near Hotel de Ville and from there we walked over to Notre Dame so she could show me a cute little Parisian cafe that she loves! While we were over there, we also spent a bit of time in Shakespeare and Company, which is a well-known and adorable book shop that used to be kind of like a hostel for writers! I had been wanting to go there, and I was glad to have finally gotten the opportunity. The cafe was just around the corner, and oh my gosh, it was too cute! It was very quaint and hidden away, but from it there was a splendid view of Notre Dame! We drank our coffees and talked about missing the sunshine. Alessandra comes from a warm part of Italy on the coast, so she understands me hahah. That day is was super misty in Paris and not great weather for walking around, so we decided to go to the movies again hahah. We took the train to a part of Paris neither of us had ever been to before, and found the theater with ease. We decided to see “Allegiant” which is the third movie in the “Divergent” series, which were made after books that I read while I was in Chile. We had an hour to kill before our movie, so we went to a bagel place and split a bagel haha. When it was time, we walked back to the movie theater and watched our movie. I enjoyed it, although I was stressed out because, you know, I was attached to the characters after reading the books and I didn’t like watching them go through difficult things. It was a bit complicated for Alessandra because she is Italian and the movie was in English with French subtitles, so she had to really focus to know what was happening, but she didn’t complain at all! When it was finished, we took the metro part of the way home together and said goodbye at Saint Lazare. I enjoyed the walk home after the metro. It was misty but not too cold and it kind of reminded me of Santa Cruz. When I got home, Fred made me an omelette for dinner and then I went to bed early because I wanted to get up early this morning to write this so I could make the most of this super sunny Sunday. 

And now that I am finishing up, it is 10am and I will probably leave in an hour or so for Paris. This past week has been a simple but fun one, and this weekend will be my only weekend in Paris for all of April! I have two trips coming up, you know! One to Luxembourg and then three weeks in Italy with the host family. Today I want to enjoy a full day in Paris because it is the last one I get for a whole month! 

SO. I am going to go outside and play now hahah. I hope you enjoyed reading this aaaand I will write next week and tell you all about the random little weekend I will spend in Luxembourg haha. :D Bye!