Sunday afternoon was roadtrip time again! Anna and I had hot chocolate at this amazing place opposite the royal palace here, Kerli showed it too me and now I'm addicted, you get 'chocolate spoons' in all types of flavours (including Speculoos!) that you drop into a cup of hot milk, its soooo good. We met Steve and headed to the Mosel region.
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| wine tasting in Wormeldange |
The Mosel region is in the Southeast of Luxembourg, with the Moselle river running down between Luxembourg and Germany, and then down into France. The region is really famous for wine in all three countries, with Luxembourg making mostly Rivaner, Auxerrois Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Noir. The sun was out and it was a great drive down the Luxembourgish side of the river past all of the vines and vineyards, with the hills in the German side covered in tiny villages.
We headed further south to Remich, which with a population of 3000 people is the biggest city in the southeastern Luxembourg!
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| Fritures de la Moselle |
We watched the sun setting brillantly over the hills, and took a wrong turn that saw us cross a bridge into the German side - Anna noted how ugly German was compared to Luxembourg before we turned back! We did jump out and walk over the bridge again so I could take pictures, I love all of the signs that say you're going into a different country!
In Remich we had dinner on the terrace of a restaurant. I tried the main dish of the area, Friture de la Moselle, which is small fish from the Moselle River (which maybe isn't such a good idea to begin with when you think of the colour of the river!) that are deep fried whole, like
the dish I talked about at the Schueberfouer. I can't say it was something I will order a second time!
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| Steve, Anna and I |
We stopped in another village on the way back to Lux city, I forget where but we parked on the street outside a bar, got out and debated whether to go to that more traditional looking bar or the more modern one down the road, decided to stick with the traditional one, but before we moved a man came out of it and started yelling at us in Luxembourgish that we weren't allowed to park there and go to the other bar, and he was so rude that we changed out minds about going there and just moved the car. The other bar was great, the guy was really friendly and moved chairs around for us and brought us free snacks, and the place was packed even on a Sunday night.
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| Remich |
The following week Rogier was away for work, so on Tuesday Jacquie and I loaded the kids into the car and headed to the Netherlands. We dropped Pepi off to spend a couple of nights at her parents place, I think they live in a village called Oosterbeek, and then went to Rogier's mother's apartment in Boxtel with Ollie. The weather was crazy this week, both in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, it was up between 25 and 30 degrees most of the time - it felt like we were finally getting the summer we missed out on!
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| Remich |
Staying there with Ollie was fun, as it's full of all sorts of things that small children shouldn't be touching. Luckily he really got into the swing of pointing at something and making a questioning noise, and waiting for me to say 'nay' or nod before he picked it up. I babysat that night and Ollie was a mess when Jacquie left, he walked around the house picking up all of the photos that had her in them saying 'mama, mama', but once he had calmed down he went to sleep really easily. Wednesday we went back to Boxtel, and I spent the day there with Ollie, and then on Thursday all four of us returned home.
I'd spent all three days either in the car, or inside one of the two apartments, so I was going a bit crazy to get out of the house and went to have a drink with Steve, Monica and a couple of others at one of the bars down in Grund. Steve's new co-worker came, Jags. He's from London, but with Indian heritage, and has a great sense of humour, so decided to invite him along on our next roadtrip that weekend.
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| Anna and I |
Friday was the last day of September, and one of
Anna's last days in Luxembourg before she returned to
Heidelberg. We'd planned on going out, as neither of us had yet had a really big night out clubbing here, and we were also (jokingly) on a mission to find Anna one of the many nice men in suits that inhabit Luxembourg. We had dinner with Steve first, I cooked some asian noodle stirfry thing that worked quite well considering how experimental it was, and then after downing a hefty amount of wine and donning out high heels, we tottered into town.
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| Rives de Clausen |
We met my friend Kerli and some of her friends at Ikki, a bar in Clausen. Rives de Clausen is an old brewery that they converted into a nightspot filled with different bars and restaurants back in 2008. I guess its kind of like Sol Square in Christchurch, only bigger, with less going on in the open space outside, and without the bouncers at the main entrance that I used to sneak past when I was underage! Ikki is a bit too icky for me, the music is really mainstream and the people are a bit boring. One thing you quickly notice about clubbing in Luxembourg is that the girls are as scantily clad as they normally are in New Zealand! After ten months here in Europe I thought my eyeballs were going to fall out of my head looking at what everyone else was wearing, completely forgetting I used to wear the same or worse back in NZ!
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| Kerli (right) and her friend |
We met some French and Italian bankers and stayed there with them until the place closed at 2am. Luxembourg is crawling with bankers and I guess they have a pretty bad rap, all the girls that I've ever talked to here claim they're really boring, so I think I spent most of the night giving the guys stick and telling them how awesome New Zealand was. We moved with them to Bypass in the city centre and Alex joined us for a little while before I really couldn't handle my high heels anymore and called it a night.
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