This is Luxembourg City, which I visited on a whim, hoping that it would be a nice respite from Paris. (Paris was beautiful but also incredibly overwhelming, and made my brain want to implode from sensory overload.) I'm very glad that I decided to go! Probably very few people go to Europe saying, "I can't wait to go to LUXEMBOURG!" but I think that it's worth a day for anyone who is bumming around for a month or two. There's not much to do, but it is fairy-tale lovely, split by these deep greeny canyons that are scattered with ruined pieces of castles. Gorgeous.
My flickr account, with a small fraction of my Europe photos, is here.
My flickr account, with a small fraction of my Europe photos, is here.
4 comments:
I can't wait to go to Europe. I've never been.
Husband did a fair bit of his growing up in England; his father was a university professor and would move the family to England for a year every time he was up for sabbatical. Now Husband can't wait to do the same. I jokingly say "just tell me when to start packing," even though I'm not really kidding.
What, do you think, was the most memorable place you visited during your time overseas?
Sorry - that comment up there is mine. I hit "Publish" before I entered my new web address...
Blogger was being awful or maybe I was just being stupid, I don't know, but I wrote TWO replies and neither of them posted. I am not feeling very happy about writing another, but I will try to recreate it.
Really cool about your husband's childhood time spent in England! I wish that my parents had done something like that with me. Wouldn't it be incredible? I'm going to make up for it by devoting myself to world travel.
What I said in a long, thoughtful, and interesting manner is that I can't really pick a place that is most memorable: all of them, even the cities and countries that I didn't care for, are memorable in their own ways. I have favourites, but that is completely subjective and varies wildly from person to person. I think which places any given individual finds most memorable or most appealing depends on their interests. I am personally really fascinated with WW2, improbable and romantic architecture and atmospheres, and bizarre catholic mysticism. Hence, I was most fascinated and impacted by Berlin, Venice, and the various small towns in Italy with lovely cathedrals and body parts of saints. Berlin and Venice were easily my most treasured cities: they were the ones I loved so much that I could hardly bring myself to leave them. But the majority of people I talked to didn't like Venice at all -- they said that it's dirty and confusing and that there's nothing to do -- and didn't even bother going to Berlin.
The general consensus from people I've talked to is that Paris is the gem of Europe. Paris is gorgeous and is probably fascinating if you're into Napoleon and rococo and Louis the fourteenth -- which I kind of am, but history in Paris feels very distant. In Berlin it's so close and recent and real that you can literally touch it, where in Paris and in lots of Italy it is a distant, beautiful, and polished romance that you observe from afar. It is very literary, though, which I loved. I'm just coming out of my existential phase, and I love Proust and Colette, so it was really great in that sense... Pretty fun to pay homage to their graves and to drink overpriced coffee in the cafe where Sartre hung out!
Assuming you like art, another component of which area you're most drawn to depends on what sort of art you like. I'm easy with art, I like more than I dislike, and so I found something to love in almost every large city that I visited. In that sense, Arles was amazing because it is where Van Gogh painted many of his great works; Paris has the incredible Louvre and the Picasso museum; Berlin has the bust of Nefertiti and the gates of Babylon; and Italy is scattered with Michelangelo sculptures and renaissance art. It just depends on what you like, really.
Apologies for my grammar, by the way. It's five AM and I'm tired.
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