"Tour" - The Last Days...Salzburg, Luxembourg and Trier

Note : Please read the previous blogs to catch up on any of the adventures you may have missed!

Monday, September 11th

Again, the church bells were our wake up call. We got up, had our generous breakfast buffet, and decided to head to Salzburg, Austria. We were only an hour away and how could we not see the place where The Sound of Music was filmed?? Salzburg is also famous for being the place where Mozart was born (a little trivia for ya!).

So we jumped in the car, got there without too much hassle, parked and found a map right away. I could tell the “hills were alive” in the city and we were excited to explore (Note: that was Agnes’ comment…I would never say anything so girly). We did some shopping on the cobblestone streets that had tons of little, unique shops and boutiques. It was really beautiful and quaint. We saw a few castles, the Abby where Maria stayed, and the Cathedral. We took a carriage ride and then strolled through some beautiful flower gardens. We stopped into a local grocery store, bought some food for lunch and then sat in a park and had ourselves a little picnic. Before we knew it, Salzburg turned out to be one of our favorite stops.

We left around 4pm and started the long drive back to Luxembourg (roughly 7-8 hours). After some bumper to bumper traffic in Munich, a hail storm near Stuttgart, and a slight diversion (e.g., I turned off the wrong exit again….damnit!), we finally pulled up to the homestead, tired but happy. It was about 2am and we all went right to sleep with no plans to get up early the next day. What a fun week…..

Tuesday, September 12th

We were woken up the next morning around 8am, not by the lovely church bells we had grown accustomed to hearing, but to a loud and annoying drilling sound in our neighbor’s apartment. Obviously, something was under construction!

Anyway, we sat around for a bit, chatted and had some coffee and pastries. We then went into Luxembourg Centre to show my parents the Grund (the valley area of town where we usually go out). We walked around and then grabbed lunch at a place Agnes and I really like called Oscar Wilde’s. I really like this place because they have a delicious Sunday roast every week, great food in general every other day, and a nice beer garden area where they’ll show sporting events on a big screen. Plus, the signs for the toilets say “Flip Dry” (for men) and “Drip Dry” (for women)…how can you not like a place like this? Andrea had the best burger she's ever had (finally she got her burger!!), and the rest of us had a variety of other good stuff.

Afterwards we walked off our lunch by taking a stroll in the Bambesch…a forest behind my apartment with what seems like a million different running and mountain biking trails. From there, we heading to the United States Military Cemetery and World War II Memorial. The weather was gorgeous and made these two events incredibly enjoyable.

From the Memorial we drove into Remich, which is about 30 minutes outside of Luxembourg Centre on the Luxembourg - Germany border, and also the place where Agnes works. We ended up going to see the Carters, the family Ag works for. It was nice to sit and chat with them for a bit since we hadn’t seem them for some time. Plus, Ag got to see her buddy, Sebastian. It was obvious that Seb was happy to see Aggie…he ran up, hugged her around the neck and said “Ag, where have you been? I’ve wanted to play with you for ages!”

From Remich we decided to drive over to Trier, Germany. The drive from Remich to Trier is awesome! The road is all along the Moselle River and there are just tons of vineyards along the way. Basically, we were driving on the Lux side and across the river was Germany (kind of like the West Side and Lindenwald, or Cincinnati and Kentucky). The hills were just green and rolling and it was a beautiful drive.

In Trier we walked around and shopped for a bit. Then we met our friends, Robbie and Laura, at our favorite restaurant in town. We ate, drank and were merry. After dinner we walked through town to the Roman gardens. Trier is the oldest Roman town in Europe, besides Rome of course….another trivia tip!

We got home around 10pm and Ferd and Andrea just organized and packed their fudge. Off to bed we went and then on Wednesday we just woke up, had breakfast and hung out till their flight home at 2:30pm. Unfortunately, once they left, we had to go back to reality….

So all of this happened between September 5th and 13th. Last weekend (September 23rd and 24th), we went to the world famous Oktoberfest….meaning we drove back to Munich again! Even though we didn’t have tickets to any of the beer tents, Aggie randomly found a sweet set up for us (nice hotel close to the action) so we went just to check it out. Robbie and Laura came along, as well as a new American guy from our office, Ryan. We’ll be blogging all about that sometime later this week. Oh, and Mike, there'll be plenty of Drindl photos for you!

This weekend we’re chillin and I’m catching up on some work. It’s been a lazy weekend so far and we’re glad!! We needed a little break, because next weekend our great friends Steph and Pete Stratil will be coming and we’ll be off to road trip and conquer another European country. Which one? Stay tuned!