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Friday, 25 August. We spent the entire morning sightseeing and shopping in Luxembourg City. We took a tour through the casemates, the old underground fortifications which made the city an impregnable fortress in its day. (The city was taken a couple of times but always by betrayal, never by storm.) The entire hills under the old city were lined with passages with slits for muskets and even artillery, some of which is still inside.

Casemates gun ports

A main corridor carved through the rock

Fortifications below

Sharon went wild in the souvenir shops all around the entrance to the casemates. We also looked for an outdoor market someone told us about, but we never found one that sold anything but produce. We browsed through some stores but were soon asked to leave and told that everything closes from 12:00 until 14:00. We had a big lunch in a German-style place across the street from the Grand Ducal Palace (1572). We stopped at the Cathedral but found that closed, too, so we finally left the city around 13:00.

Adolphe Bridge (1903), a city landmark

The Grand Ducal Palace

Old section along the river

We headed west and crossed the border into Belgium (still without having a trittico for the car). We drove across the southern edge of that country. We didn't go through any large cities, but we stopped in a few small towns (Arlon, Etalle, Tintigny, Florenville) to look around. We found a couple of shops selling Belgian souvenirs, but the selection was very limited. Even so, it was all we could do to dissuade Sharon from buying a huge tapestry of a hunting scene for her boy friend Jeff's mother.

Window in Cathedral

Rheims Cathedral

We passed into France a few villages before Sedan and drove southwest to Rheims to see the famous Notre Dame Cathedral (1210-1241). It was beautiful, especially the stained glass windows. Unfortunately, some of the facade was covered with scaffolding, so I couldn't get a "clean" picture of the outside. Sharon wasn't at all interested in the church, and we had to drag her out of the souvenir shops again.

It was getting dark as we reached Paris, and we had a great deal of trouble finding St. Germain-en-Laye, where Colonel Shull had made reservations for us at the Hotel du Parc. I had been able to ask directions in German, but in French, even when I got the question across, I couldn't understand the answer.

We finally found the hotel and checked in. I phoned Colonel Shull, who said he had arranged for a better hotel, right in the middle of Paris, for the rest of our stay. We were glad of that because the Hotel du Parc was 12 miles from the city and wasn't too good. We had a snack in the bar downstairs and were treated to a free show in the form of an amorous couple in a booth across the room. We went to our rooms, but Sharon said the place gave her the creeps and was scared stiff. Finally, however, we all got to sleep.

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