Bock Casemates - Luxembourg

On Saturday, Kyle, Allen, Kyra and I headed for Luxembourg to spend the weekend.  Luxembourg City is about two and a half hour drive from our house.

Our first stop was the Bock Casemates.  These are a series of tunnels and rooms throughout the rock promontory you see in this photo.  We crossed the bridge at the far right of the photo and spent a couple of hours exploring the casemates and looking out through the openings you can see in the rock.

At one point the network of the casemates was 23km long.  They sheltered soldiers, horses, workshops, kitchens, etc.  During the world wars, they provided space for 35,000 people during air raids and shelling.  All this is to say that this network is not small!

We enjoyed making our way through the tunnels and look out through various openings.   We had lovely views of the city.  When we got to the circular staircases, the experience was even more interesting.  These staircases were narrow and irregular.  Some steps were barely wider than my foot. Our "handrail" was a plastic tube.  And as you can see from Allen's photo, sometimes they just ended abruptly.

We often found ourselves climbing or descending into dead ends.  As these stairways were only one person wide, there were times when we had to wait to make our way back from whence we came.  The directional signs were quite minimal so we were frequently lost.  We did lose Allen for a while but eventually we all made our way to the exit.

a view from one of the openings

After the casemates it was time for lunch before exploring more of the city.  That's tomorrow's blog.