Our days here are moving along quite quickly. Our room is comfortable - even the ants think so - and we have the ability to do our laundry and dry it on the large heating register in our room. It's been cloudy and cooler so having the heat on to dry my jeans has not been a problem. I'm turning into the laundry genius.
We went out walking today and ended up underground in the Casemates. These are up to 17 kms of underground tunnels built to hold the horses and men of the 13th century wars but were later used to protect up to 35 000 people during the two world wars. There used to be 23 kms of tunnels but only 17 remain. We walked down up to 40 meters into the earth where water dripped on our heads, mold spoke to us from the corners and puddles, threatening to swallow us up, met our every turn. Oh yah, not to forget that with every new tunnel came a new head-banging experience for G. It was pretty scary for me because I didn't want to get my runners dirty. That would have been torture.
We felt like we needed soup so we set out in the old town to find a hot bowl. Even the little restaurants that said they had soup on the menu, didn't. So now G has a new truism. You can't count on soup in Luxembourg even when it's on the menu. Finally, in the last place that we were going to try, voila, vegetable soup. Oh, but it doesn't look like vegetable soup, rather pureed broth. This, from a very expensive restaurant where the servers looked at the way we were dressed and put us in the back. They don't know that we still look this good after living out of a backpack, with hardly any clothes in it, for 110 days. Two bowls of soup and water runs you about 30 dollars in Lux.
On our way back to our hotel, we ran into several blockades. How does this always happen to us. Today, there was a manifestation. A manifestation in this part of the world is known as a strike. Yes indeed, on every street which surrounded our hotel were several thousand protesters holding signs and screaming for fair treatment.
We went for our next train tickets to Brussels airport for our next two-day stop over before our flight for home. On our way back to our hotel, we stopped into a grocery store to buy more cereal and milk for supper and two beers. The price of wine and beer here in Europe is something we will desperately miss when we get home. Two huge 1/2 liter cans of beer for 91 cents. So, while watching our new favourite tv channel, the Eurosport Network and tennis or snooker, we are drinking beer and G has put a dent into a bag of chips.
J
