In three days, Sam and I went to the adjacent regions of three different countries as day trips from Luxembourg. It’s the kind of thing that makes me marvel at both the distances and the transportation networks across Europe – coming from the Western US, you can’t even have a similar experience in US states, let alone different countries. It was a great start to the trip and I would recommend any of these destinations, but part of why I keep up this website is to reflect on my own experiences, so here goes.
Third Place: Metz, France
Full disclosure, we weren’t even planning on going to Metz because I’d made this exact same calculation when I was planning this trip based on travel blogs. But the universe had other plans, and instead of the nice, 2.5 hour nonstop train ride from Paris to Luxembourg, we had a stop in Metz and then another stop in Thionville and then a bus ride, and we wanted to have dinner with Sam’s friend in Paris. So we did a stopover in Metz. I was glad to get the chance to explore it a bit before we headed up to Luxembourg City. Perhaps ranking it last is unfair of me, because we only gave it about a half day, which was the least amount of time of any of these places, but I’m also not entirely sure what we would have done with the other half day.
Pros: It’s very convenient, only an hour by transit even if there’s no rail and you have to do a bus bridge. Cheaper than Luxembourg. French food, and in particular, French bread. Charming, small Old Town with a few cool old churches and castles.
Second Place: Namur, Belgium
Namur was my top choice for a day trip, because I really wanted to visit the French part of Belgium – when Alan and I went to Antwerp, we stayed pretty north, and I was interested in going to a new region. I compared Namur, Liège, and Dinant, and Namur had by far the best train connections to Luxembourg. Still, I am going to ding this one in the rankings because of how far it was. Two hours by train was the scheduled time, and it ended up taking us closer to three to get there because our train broke down and we had to get off at the platform and wait for the next one.
Still, despite that strange start to the morning, I really enjoyed Namur. We were there during some sort of food truck festival, which made for a fun lunch.
The best thing we did was take the cable car up to the Citadel. The views were amazing, we had a lovely walk down the hill, and we even found the golden turtle that functions as a de facto symbol of the city, which was something I had wanted to see! We also headed to the Félicien Rops museum, who was billed as Belgium’s most controversial painter. After seeing the room in the museum entitled “Eroticism and Satanism,” I can see why.
Pros: I think the Wallonia region is the most culturally interesting of the three day trips, especially if you’ve traveled to the Flanders region of Belgium in the past. The linguistic division of Belgium is something that we talked about in French class, and the way that my travel has worked out, it was easier to come to Namur from Luxembourg than it was to visit Wallonia when I was in Antwerp and Ghent. There were some solid museum options and we definitely could have spent more time up in the area with the citadel, as they had built that area up more for tourists.
First Place: Trier, Germany
Trier wins because of its Roman ruins and because of its proximity to Luxembourg City. Only an hour away, and it is seriously dense with options of what to do. We started at their symbol of the city, the Porta Nigra, which was an old Roman gate. Fun fact, part of the reason it was preserved so well is because a Greek monk started living in it to get away from society. We also made it to the Roman baths, which were over a larger site with a subterranean portion, and there was an amphitheater nearby that we could have gone to if we hadn’t wanted to eat dinner before our train back.
We also headed to the Karl Marx house, which was a well done museum that read like a cautionary tale – what if you really like philosophy and you think that workers should have a few rights, and then a bunch of politicians decide to take your life’s work and use it to justify a lot of terrible things, like genocide or imprisoning people in Siberia? Pretty rough, if you ask me.
We also had a chance to explore some of the city center, which was beautiful and had a few plaques to commemorate history that Sam had to translate for me, including a very old pharmacy. Sam also found us a potato restaurant for dinner, which for me is the peak German food experience!
Pros: Between the short distance and the German rail system, this was definitely the easiest, logistically. I also think it’s the best option for history lovers, between the Roman ruins and all the other historical sites spread out across the city. Trier has the oldest bridge in Germany, dating back to the 2nd century, and somehow it’s still both standing and in use.
Regardless, all three were excellent and I don’t think it’s possible to go wrong here. We went every direction from Luxembourg City and found something cool – north to Vianden, east to Trier, south to Metz, and west to Namur (well, northwest, but we’ll still count it). It sits really well at the crossroads of a lot of interesting places, and it was the perfect way to start out this trip. Once we were done in Luxembourg, we headed back to Paris to start the main event: the Olympics!
