Day 35: A lot of history for such a small country

Today Mark and Matt went to church and then met Nate in the city to explore the town. There were a lot of suggestions but we picked the American WWII memorial.

The memorial was just outside the city but between a bus ride and short walk it was pretty easy to get too.

Walking through the memorial was a quite an experience and put our trip in a new light. A lot of the men buried must have been our age. A special thanks to them for allowing us to tour these parts of Europe today.

The memorial was beautiful. The grass was perfectly manicured and the crosses were in perfect alignment. I could write on about it but we took a lot of pictures that I'll let speak for themselves.

Of note, General Patton was buried here.

After the memorial Nate went back to the campsite and Mark and Matt went to explore the old fortress.

Our first stop was at the oldest cathedral in Luxembourg built in 957.

(of which I could've sworn I had a picture, but j guess not)

Next we walked an old castle wall which overlooked the castle and old defensive walls. Turns out Luxembourg has a pretty war torn history starting all the way back to the Romans. (Not to mention also a place of conflict in WWI and WWII).

If we had another day here I would do one of the tours here. They are 12€ but all the signs are in French or German (2 of the 3 official languages here, the last being Luxembourgish) and the web and brochures can only tell you some much.

On a nerdy note, Luxembourg City has amazing city wide wifi. It's the best large wifi network I have seen in any city.

Back at camp we ran into our typical Sunday problem. We forgot that everything closes on Sunday! Also, we were out of gas. We were able to buy noodles and sauce at the camp store (side note: all the campsites here have camp stores) but heat was an issue.

We were about to give up when Nate remembered someone has used the BBQ to grill early. The hadn't used charcoal but the ashes from a fire. Using some magical blowing technique Nate was able to reheat the coals and with constant work was able to get the water boiling without 15 mins. Problem solved.

While eating with talked with some younger guys who are riding the train around Europe. They were from Austria and spoke great English. After this trip the have mandatory conscription in the Austrian army for 6 months. One of them is joining the red cross for 9 months instead. They were a great group of guys who had some great stories from their trips.

Tomorrow is another day on the bike. We are headed up to St. Vith (an town which we learned today was hammered during the Battle of the Bulge).