Where's Bertie? He's five metres away from the canal at Thieu, where he previously spent the nights of 9&10 June.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine.
Arriving in Luxembourg City this morning, we thought our visit was going to be over before it started, just like our visit to Ghent back in March, and for the same reason: the huge car park in which we had intended to leave Bertie was closed and full of a funfair. I knew of no other Bertie-friendly car park that was a short-enough walk from the city centre, and we weren't going to drive around aimlessly trying to find one. So, we pulled into some roadside parking for a rethink and, after a bit of manoeuvring, decided that Bertie fitted into that space well enough to leave him there whilst we looked around. Hitting the city on a Sunday morning was definitely a good bet, with the roads quiet and little competition for parking spaces (which also happen to be free on the weekend).
With the shops shut on a Sunday, I had expected that we would have the city streets almost to ourselves. What I hadn't anticipated was that the place would be so multi-nationally touristy. Almost everyone we did see was clearly there for the same purpose as us, and a large number of them were speaking English.
Fountain of the day, front and back views.
We spent a couple of hours wandering, with the highlight being the city walls...
...and, if we weren't on a schedule and there had been somewhere suitable to park, we probably could have filled at least a day, and maybe two.
I'm not sure how we came to leave Bertie without arming ourselves with any food, water or even our hats (on a clear-skied day - careless!), but at least the first two issues were easy to resolve:
The only other thing to divert our course back to Bertie was the sound of music from somewhere nearby. A band, making proper use of a bandstand, was providing an excellent performance:
The afternoon consisted of driving, with just an interlude for diesel and for lunch, both birds killed with one stone at the last motorway service station before we left Luxembourg (fuel prices are uniform across the whole of the country, even at motorway services). Had we known we would only be buying diesel (their LPG pump was closed) we would stopped at one of many quiet petrol stations on our way out of the city, instead of queuing five vehicles deep (at 20 pumps!)* and having to deal with a really badly designed payment system.
Back in Belgium there aren't a huge number of dedicated motorhome parking areas, from which to choose, so we opted for the space-guaranteed option of returning to Thieu. Being right on the canal, it also serves to give me an easy location for a run in the morning.
(*Diesel currently costs 111.9c/litre in Luxembourg, compared with an average price of 154.9c/litre in Belgium. It's understandable that people are willing to queue, having nipped over the border to fill up.)
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine.
Arriving in Luxembourg City this morning, we thought our visit was going to be over before it started, just like our visit to Ghent back in March, and for the same reason: the huge car park in which we had intended to leave Bertie was closed and full of a funfair. I knew of no other Bertie-friendly car park that was a short-enough walk from the city centre, and we weren't going to drive around aimlessly trying to find one. So, we pulled into some roadside parking for a rethink and, after a bit of manoeuvring, decided that Bertie fitted into that space well enough to leave him there whilst we looked around. Hitting the city on a Sunday morning was definitely a good bet, with the roads quiet and little competition for parking spaces (which also happen to be free on the weekend).
With the shops shut on a Sunday, I had expected that we would have the city streets almost to ourselves. What I hadn't anticipated was that the place would be so multi-nationally touristy. Almost everyone we did see was clearly there for the same purpose as us, and a large number of them were speaking English.
Fountain of the day, front and back views.
We spent a couple of hours wandering, with the highlight being the city walls...
...and, if we weren't on a schedule and there had been somewhere suitable to park, we probably could have filled at least a day, and maybe two.
I'm not sure how we came to leave Bertie without arming ourselves with any food, water or even our hats (on a clear-skied day - careless!), but at least the first two issues were easy to resolve:
The only other thing to divert our course back to Bertie was the sound of music from somewhere nearby. A band, making proper use of a bandstand, was providing an excellent performance:
The afternoon consisted of driving, with just an interlude for diesel and for lunch, both birds killed with one stone at the last motorway service station before we left Luxembourg (fuel prices are uniform across the whole of the country, even at motorway services). Had we known we would only be buying diesel (their LPG pump was closed) we would stopped at one of many quiet petrol stations on our way out of the city, instead of queuing five vehicles deep (at 20 pumps!)* and having to deal with a really badly designed payment system.
Back in Belgium there aren't a huge number of dedicated motorhome parking areas, from which to choose, so we opted for the space-guaranteed option of returning to Thieu. Being right on the canal, it also serves to give me an easy location for a run in the morning.
(*Diesel currently costs 111.9c/litre in Luxembourg, compared with an average price of 154.9c/litre in Belgium. It's understandable that people are willing to queue, having nipped over the border to fill up.)
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