I went to Luxemburg a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it's very close to Belgium, but I'd only ever stopped there on the way to somewhere else. It seems Belgians only go to Luxemburg to stop for gas or to buy cigarettes. Actually that's not true, I met loads of Belgian tourists, but that's what it sounded like when I was looking for info.

Close can be good. About three hours on the train and I was in Luxemburg City. From there I took a bus to Echternach on the German border. I'd found out there were hiking trails connecting all the youth hostels, so I walked from Echternach to Beaufort to Larochette to Hollenfels to a town near Luxemburg City. As you can tell from reading this blog, I've got plenty of experience travelling by myself, but this was the first hiking trip by myself. I'm not a very good mapreader, so I was somehwat anxious about the whole thing upfront.

Echternach turned out to be a really nice little town. Very touristy, but for a good reason. It has beautiful old buildings (including one of the finest Romanesque churches I ever visited) and laid-back atmosphere, and is surrounded by beautiful hills. And the hostek was nice too, even if it did have lock-out and curfew.

I stayed there two nights so I had a day for a short hike to warm up. I walked to a nearby (artificial) lake and around it, first up into the hills, then along the lakeshore. There's a Roman villa on the lakeshore too, so I checked that out. Then I walked back to town and saw everything there is to see in Echternach, and walked into Germany and back. And then I was bored. But luckily I ran into Hannah, my American roommate from the hostel, at the park and we went to play minigolf. Fun!

In the evening we made pasta, joined by another roommate, Maria from Shrewsbury, coïncidentally one of the few places I've been to in England. She was cycling around southern Belgium and Luxemburg, that sounded pretty cool. After dinner we walked into Germany again, and found out it was only an hour by bus to Trier, Hannah's next stop.

The walk from Echternach to Beaufort was very nice. The start of the trail went straight up, but it was worth it. I saw a lot of odd rock formations, like caves turned inside out. The Wolfsschlucht/Gorge du Loup (wolf's gorge) was truly spectacular. It rained for a while, but I barely felt it because the forest was so dense.

I accidently took the wrong trail that day for a bit, because I had more faith in the trail-markers than in my own map-reading ability. I knew the hostel trail was marked by triangles. What I didn't know was that those were not the green triangles that I'd followed until then, but the white ones that only appeared sporadically (and rarely at crossroads). It turned out to be a lucky mistake, as that detour really offered the most rewarding scenery and oddest rock formations of the entire trip.

After I got back to the right trail it got kinda boring for a while, but the last part went along a river so that was nice.

The first sign of Beaufort was its castle. I still had plenty of time before the hostel opened, so I checked out the interior as well. Not really worth the entrance fee, unless you haven't been to any castles before. But my first day walking had gone well, so I was happy nonetheless. It wouldn't last very long. But I'll tell you about that next time.