Lovely Luxembourg City

Here you gaze upon the lovely Old Town Luxembourg City, taken as we walk across the bridge from New town. The weather was quite beautiful today and we enjoyed walking around the old town and seeing many of the interesting sites that the city has to offer. Of course, we had our tour guide, Ernest along which made things so much easier for us.,

Once in the Old Town, we stopped into the Cathedral of Luxembourg, known as the Church of Our Lady.

It is discretely located off of side alley.

In Constitution Plaza, there stands a statue to William II.

It stands in the middle of the square surrounded by unique buildings.

Our first venture was to the Casements, underground tunnels dug into the cliff in the late 1800's. They were built for protection purposes, and one can only imagine the manual labor that went into digging out the maze of rooms. 

 This structure is considered to be one of the world's Unesco heritage site.

Above you can see the canon holes.

And the views over the city were quite impressive.

After visiting the casements, we decided to stop for lunch since we had time prior to our scheduled tour of the Ducal Palace.

Lunch was at a well known local restaurant called Bacchus. Ernest went to see if they could accommodate us with a table, and we were told that it would be a few minutes. Well, time went by, and the owner spotted us waiting patiently by the door, and the next thing we knew, we were being ushered to the back of the restaurant, to wait a few minutes more, but we were each given a glass of cold sparkling prosecco by this man, compliments of the house, as a thank you for waiting.

   

I found it to be quite refreshing myself, but noticed that Marty downed his before we even got a picture!  We handed him Amy's glass so that it wouldn't look like he had an empty glass.  But, now you know that he did!

We enjoyed a delightful lunch, although Amy's pest gnocchi was way too heavy on the basil, and she ended up eating a only piece of tiramisu for lunch. Not the most desirable lunch, but certainly better than nothing!

After lunch we walked to the spot of the Golden Lady statue which stands over the Old Town.

She was originally erected in honor of World War I victims, but the Germans decided that shse must be taken down in the late 1930's when the established German rule over the country. The statue was then hidden by some local townsment, and discovered nearly 60 years later. It was referbished and mounted again, at the insistence of the locals.

At last, it was time for our tour through the Ducal Palace. It was NOT disappointing. In fact, quite the opposite. There were so many beautiful things to see in the recently restored palace. No photos were permiltted, so you'll just have to take m yword for it. The guide was great and the tour was fantastic.

We drove back to Echternach, and met up with Mike, who met us at the crossing site where Marty's Uncle Fred was last known to be in Feb. 1945. It was interesting walking through the woods once again, only this time seeing the remarkable discovery by Mike.

If you know the story, you remember that I located a man who hand drew me a map, 60 years after the battle, pinpointing the spot where a "new recruit" suddenly disappeared by stepping onto a landmine. We realized several years ago that this map was extremely accurate in details.  You can find it on the website that I mentioned yesterday.

In analyzing this map, Mike has been able to substantiate nearly the right spot where Fred would have last been seen. He located the large tree  which was drawn on the map,(it is the only really old tree in the forest in the area around the bunker)  and suddenly, he noticed that a trench runs along the woods from pillbox #2 to pillbox #3. After a lot of time putting all of the pieces together, Mike strongly feels that Fred fell into a trench between this tree and the bunker, after he had stepped on a landmine.

In walking through the woods tonight, it is easy to agree with his opinion. Since the trench is 6 feet deep and is filled with barbed wire, it doesn't seem feasible to start digging and looking for Fred.

All of the information leads to the conclusion that Fred is buired in the woods in the location between the tree and the bunker and we can pinpoint an approximate area where he probably lays.  

We all agreed that we can say with strong certainly that we know where Fred's final resting place is. We cannot say for sure exactly where he is buried, but we feel at peace that we can say that his body is located in a certain section of woods in Germany, just across the Sauer River from Luxembourg.

The full moon over the horizon seemed to shine upon us as we said one last good-bye to Fred. He was one of the many who died way too young, defending the freedom of Luxembourg, and the family can e proud to know that the citizens here are grateful to Americans for his efforts. Never have we received more gracious welcomes than from the citizens of Luxembourg.