In Luxembourg

Mall of America Pictures

Luxembourg Pictures

My 83rd country! But I also got countries 82 (Switzerland) and 81 (Iceland) in the past couple of days. We're here, but it hasn't been easy getting here. But let me start where I left off in Minneapolis. We enjoyed our day at the Mall of America, but it was a long day on our feet and turned out to be a hard start. MOA is crazy! There is not currently a drug store in there, but there is an aquarium and an amusement park. Go figure? We found the watch batteries we were seeking, had lunch at the Shack Shack (pretty good) and Mom bought a pair of kid's Merrells sandals. It was pay your age day at Build-a-Bear and the number of kids queued up was astonishing.

We all arrived early at Terminal 2 at MSP where we met Mom's friend Carol. Things were looking good with the plane coming in from Reykjavik on time for us. About 20 minutes before it landed at Gate H5 where we waited, MSP airport shut down due to the leading edge of a cold front coming through with high wind, hail, rain and lightening. It looked like it would last severely for 15 minutes and be over, but no it was extended to 45 minutes and that caused the inbound flight to divert to Duluth to refuel. It made our departure delayed by 3 hours. That meant that we were not going to make our connection to Zurich in Iceland. As promised, Iceland Air rerouted us while we were in the air and sent an email. Unless you were in Saga Class with free wifi, or opted to pay for wifi in air though, you wouldn't know it. Keflavik Airport seemed disorganized and understaffed. If we hadn't been in Saga Class with access to the Lounge, it is not clear we'd have made the new connection either. Mom had asked me in MSP to ask at the gate counter to link our reservations so we could stay together and that made all the difference. We continued to fall further behind schedule though. Mom wound up getting an upgrade and Carol got left behind. I don't know why since the counter agent had turned my 80 year old Mother and her equally aged friend are traveling with us and we need to stay together despite the different fare classes into my aged parents. Um, is friend a code word meaing something else in Minnesota? I just went with it and it helped us out. After we passed the Schengen border entry, we lucked out with a helpful woman in the Saga Lounge who got our new SAS boarding passes printed for us and then gave us timely and accurate step by step advice on our next steps. We had a quick break in the lounge and then down to baggage claim where we now had to pick up our luggage, go through customs, re-enter security and go to the ticketing area to recheck our bags. It was all only self-service for SAS and it wasn't clear we were doing everything correctly. I had a hell of a time finding ice in Iceland! We finally lined up at a gate which was just a long corral to the jetway door and Clay watched what he swore was one of our rolling duffels being removed and driven away from our plane. I saw the bag but not the context. It created a panic over when or if we'd any of us see our luggage again. This flight was to, wait for it, Oslo. I know, not quite on the way to Zurich again! We made it and had a 2 hour layover for a final flight to Zurich. Take off from Oslo was when we had been scheduled to arrive by car in Luxembourg! We landed in Zurich and our bags were there! Relief! Now we finally had to make a decision about what to do before joining our Trafalgar Tour on Sunday afternoon. Clay & I had prepaid the rental car and 2 nights at the Ibis Styles Gare Hotel in Luxembourg which made more sense with a 5 hour daytime sightseeing drive. Now our drive would be between 10 pm and 2:30am. The argument for continuing with the plan was that it was already paid for (about $82 per night per room double occupany with included breakfast) and a replacement plan closer to Zurich would be much more expensive plus the loss of the prepaid plan. Clay had been sleeping a lot on planes and offered to go ahead and drive. We all soldiered on. We picked up and loaded up a Renault Grand Scenic and set off. Bonus was that we drove through France and saw hours of Bastille Day fireworks as Friday the 13th turned into Saturday July 14th.

We were all exhausted when we arrived at the Ibis Styles. Clay & I have enjoyed Ibis Hotels throughout Europe. They are usually centrally located, inexpensive, clean and serve a basic functionality. I just saw Ibis when we booked this and didn't bother investigating that Ibis Styles is a more petite cousin brand! The 2 rooms are comically small. Still clean and basic and centrally located and very affordable. I probably wouldn't have picked it if I'd realized though. We all slept like stones and making the last hour from 10 to 11am of our included breakfast buffet was a challenge.

We seem to have been in a heat wave everywhere and today was no exception. Bright sun, hot and humid. It is summer and it seems everywhere experiences extremes anymore. We had a loose plan to ride the HOHO bus today. We did finally make a couple of laps, but it wasn't easy. I thought there was a pickup right in front of the train station and there was right across from the end of Rue Joseph Junck, but we didn't find it. Clay thought it was elsewhere and we looked there unsuccessfully. The hotel clerk told him yet somewhere else and she was wrong but while standing there we saw a lime green doubledecker bus across the bus lot right where we'd started. We ran across and got tickets and boarded. The upstairs didn't have enough available seats. We stayed down, but it was unbearably hot and we couldn't sit toghether and find working audio jacks for commentary. It turned out it didn't matter because after about 4 stops our bus had to unload and transfer to one behind it. We wound up at the back of a huge scrum and had the same problems downstairs. We finally got organized with working audio all around when we realized we couldn't really see anything from inside downstairs. It took 3 tries to snag upstairs seats with working audio for 3 (Mom & Carol shared a headset) and so we committed to a 2nd circuit and hoped we didn't get forced off again. Luxembourg is small, diverse with a lot of construction. It is seedier than I expected but we arrived and walked the streets near the hotel/station at 3am on Saturday to learn that there is an active sex business in Luxembourg. That was a surprise.

We are all in our rooms resting now. We plan to eat Italian close by at Vapiano at 6pm. (It was way too complicated and we didn't enjoy it much besides the very pleasant hostess.) We plan to buy a small bag of ice on the way back to Ibis and early to bed for a 7am departure back to Zurich tomorrow. The store where we found the 2-lb. bag of ice cubes for about 2 Euros, Clay thought closed at 8pm, but it closed at 7pm. We walked a few blocks in hope and found a larger grocery that was on the verge of closing. It had the same ice or crushed ice for a few cents less. Success! Everyone was very excited. We had not had any ice all day except the few cubes I got this morning. There is a story! The Ibis has ice individually packaged in plastic blisters. They are a nightmare! You can't get them out and all the handling melts them. I got one sheet last night and one this morning and I hated to have to beg another since we all hated that ice almost as much as no ice at all!

So we're back on track! Hopefully by tomorrow morning we'll have all acclimated to the time changes we've been through. If an 8 hour diversion through Oslo is the worst thing that happens on this trip, we'll be pleased.

Mall of America Pictures

Luxembourg Pictures