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Luxembourg

Luxembourg City in September 2013: the Adolphe Bridge over the Petrusse valley, ramparts and gardens, a war memorial, and painted elephants everywhere.

Luxembourg City, September 2013. The whole capital is arranged around a green gorge, so you spend the day walking along cliff edges and old fortress walls, looking down into gardens where a river valley ought to be. It is a very small country doing a very grand impression.

The valley and the bridge

Every path along the ramparts eventually frames the same star of the show: the stone arch of the Adolphe Bridge over the Petrusse valley.

The stone arch of the Adolphe Bridge spanning the leafy Petrusse valley in Luxembourg City, with buses crossing and a triangular hedged garden below
The Adolphe Bridge from the ramparts, with tidy triangular gardens tucked into the valley floor beneath it.
Inga and Dileep smiling together on the ramparts of Luxembourg City, with the Adolphe Bridge and wooded valley behind them
Us on the wall above the valley. The bridge photobombs politely from the back.
Inga standing at the base of the Monument of Remembrance in Luxembourg City, in front of green bronze figures of a seated soldier and a lying figure, above an inscription to the war volunteers of 1914 to 1918 and 1940 to 1945
The Monument of Remembrance, dedicated to Luxembourg's volunteers of both world wars. The bronze figures at the base stop you mid-stroll.

Around town

Away from the cliff edge, the old town turns into neat pedestrian streets, and we kept running into painted elephants: one guarding the flowerbeds outside the bank, another waiting for Inga by a bridge.

Pedestrian shopping street in Luxembourg City lined with stone facades, hanging flower baskets, shoppers and Luxembourg city banners
The shopping streets of the old town, all flower baskets and unhurried shoppers.
The stone State Savings Bank building in Luxembourg City with its tall clock tower and green spire, behind road signs pointing to Trier, Remich and Saarbrucken
The State Savings Bank tower, looking more like a castle than a bank. The road signs offer Trier and Saarbrucken as casually as the next suburb.
Inga standing next to a light blue painted elephant sculpture with an orange face mask design, on a stone bridge in Luxembourg City
One of the painted elephants dotted around the city that September. Inga made a friend.

One day was enough to walk most of it and not nearly enough to be done with it. Luxembourg is small, vertical and quietly show-off, and we mean that as a compliment.