Highlight Country drive in Luxembourg

We had a bonus today in Bastoge, as I had not realised breakfast was included in our stay. We ate in Natalie’s kitchen area and had a brief chat before we did some work on the computer and left for the Alsace.

We took a strange route at first, because of a cache (“wow” – JB). John was a bit sick of motorway driving so we went first to North 50 East 6, which we had to enter on the Tomtom as N 50.0000 E 6.0000. It did what John wanted, and we had a lovely country drive from Bastogne in the Luxembourg Province of Belgium to the country of Luxembourg. At the site there was a special marking of the only confluence point in the country. There was also an interesting looking notice board, but we could not read it. We did get back on motorways afterwards and headed south.

The idea had been to drive on to Alscace and through the villages before we went to our room for the night in Valff, a small village at the north of the Alsace area. It turned out to be 30C when we arrived in the nearby town of Obernai. We parked and found some light food and looked around the centre of the town, which was very pretty.  John’s request was to look for some caches out of the towns instead of inside and maybe drive tomorrow, so I found a circuit which was meant to go through vineyards. We had a problem getting to the start as all the GPS’s thought there was a road that didn’t exist but we found our way to a starting point. The route was really a biking route and there was only one vineyard area in the part we had time for, but we again benefited from a walk after time in the car, and it was pleasant, with lots of trees around providing shade. We had mixed success with the caches as we were in view of people at times and also struggled with reception. It proved to be 3-1 to John with the finds.

We timed it nicely and pulled up outside Magali’s place at 6.01 pm – 1 minute late. She greeted us with offers of beers, soda or juice and, after moving the car to the parking area and taking our bags downstairs we sat outside under a tree with her and her husband (whose name we were never sure of). Her English is hugely better than my French and she said she was delighted to have visitors from NZ and to practice her English. She told us later that she works for a German businessman who doesn’t speak French but does speak English so that it is the language they communicate in.

We had a very enjoyable time in the garden with our hosts and also Magali’s sister and brother in law who arrived soon after we did. We then had time to do some computer work in the cool of our room. We were told it was the coolest room in the house and that seemed correct although we did have to go back up for the bathroom. Magali booked an evening meal for us in a Valff restaurant that was a 6-minute walk away and had a terrace.

Booking proved unnecessary as they hotel restaurant had a few spaces left on the terrace, but only by the concrete wall so John did not have much of a view. After some confusion about my order, we had a nice meal although we had a rather long wait for the bill to arrive. We were back home at 10pm and, no I had not drunk a lot, but I missed the last stair when going down carrying things and twisted my ankle. I hobbled into bed to rest it while assuring John and Magali I was basically fine, just feeling silly.