Tags
Benelux, Christmas, Christmas market, Christmas Markets, family travel, German, Luxembourg, Luxembourg Christmas Market, Luxembourg City, Shopping
After hitting many of what I consider to be the “main” cities in Western Europe over half my lifetime I had a picture of what Luxembourg City would be. I figured, French influence, part of Benelux so similar to both Paris and Brussels with a little German thrown in. While I did find all of this to be true, it was so much more.
Luxembourg City is a confusing city, as many old European cities are, but with the help of the friendly Apple Maps voice in my phone we easily found a very nice parking garage right in between two Christmas Markets that were going on. The signage in the city was far better than I have seen in some, I’m talking to you Brussels and Heidelberg, and the city was impeccably clean where we were. One of the biggest differences from other places we have been recently was that nearly everyone spoke English – and was happy to do so! With three national languages in the tiny country we were not sure what to expect but were pleasantly surprised that my elementary school level of French was not all we had to rely on!
With only having a few hours in the city we hit both Christmas Markets which we found to be lovely, different from the German markets with fewer handmade items and more food but still very nice and reasonably priced. I was most surprised by how friendly everyone was – from the cafe where we had an early lunch to the jewelry store we stopped at for my Christmas present from my lovely husband. The main shopping area in the center of town is pedestrian priority – a European term for our American readership – which is lovely. It means that just a few delivery trucks or local traffic may be on the streets but they must yield to pedestrians.
We will definitely be returning to Luxembourg City as we barely scratched the surface, the river through the city and surrounding parks and walking paths will be calling our names as the weather warms up. There are so many amazing restaurants in the city we have heard about and have now seen so we will be reporting back on those later!
Don’t worry Luxembourg, we will be back… especially given the jewelry selection…