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“What is there to do in Luxembourg City?” “Is it worth visiting?” “How long do we need in the City?” were all questions that rattled around my brain after spontaneously booking £20 flights to Luxembourg in the Summer.
During my research, I ended up getting pretty damn distracted (typical) by the possible day trips from the city. I fell in love with the idea of visiting Vianden and the Moselle Valley which left us with one day to explore Luxembourg City. Luckily, one day in the City is a perfect amount of time as it’s very small and easily walkable.
As with the rest of our days in Luxembourg, we made sure to stock up on a huge hotel breakfast at the Double Tree Hilton before hopping on a bus into the city centre. Normally I like to be up and out before 9am on a short city-break but we noticed that most things didn’t open until around 10am, so enjoyed the lie-in!
Our first stop was to admire the Palais Grand-Ducal (or Palace of the Grand Dukes) for a quick photo session and look around. We quickly learnt that if you are visiting in the Summer months, you are able to book guided tours inside the Palace, so we made sure to book a tour for later on in the day!
The Cathedrale Notre Dame opened at 10 and we swiftly entered before a large tour group to admire the very impressive stain glass windows. While the Luxembourg “Notre Dame” may not be be the most famous “Notre Dame” in the world, it’s definitely worth peaking inside (don’t miss the crypt also!)
RELATED: If city sightseeing isn’t for you, don’t worry, Luxembourg still has so much to offer! Maybe head to the Moselle Valley for wine tasting instead?
After stumbling around the Palace and Cathedral, we headed to the Place de la Constitution for that postcard shot of the gardens from above. If there’s one thing that Luxembourg City isn’t short of, it’s gorgeous viewpoints!
When travelling, I seem to forget that I have a completely irrational fear of heights and tend to find myself in situations that scare the living daylights out of me. This obviously happened in Luxembourg when we stumbled across “Sky Village”.
Before we knew it, we were in a glass 360 rotating elevator heading skywards for better views of the city! Unfortunately Sky Village was only open for 8 weeks in 2017 and has now been dismantled – but if you’re visiting in Summer in future years, keep an eye out to see if it will be making a come back!
With us in the mood for more beautiful viewpoints, we set off in the general direction of Le Chemin de la Corniche but got mightily distracted (and/or lost) along the way.
First up on the list of distractions was Cité judiciaire (Judiciary City) which is the home of the judiciary and governmental buildings in Luxembourg. Of course, you can’t enter these buildings (unless you’re an important person), but the area is gorgeous and lovely to have a walk around.
Now, Le Chemin de la Corniche is referred to as “The Balcony of Europe” and is supposed to have the most spectacular views of the city but I was just as impressed with the walk there!
We stopped regularly to take photos of the dramatic city scenery (preferably under trees/various other shade giving obstacles as our day in the city was BLIMMIN’ BOILING).
Lunchtime! After a morning of wandering around in the boiling hot sun, we hobbled over to the closest food establishment that we could see (hopping and skipping through the shadiest areas as best as possible – almost acting as if the non-shaded floor was lava). Unfortunately this means that we ended up in a pub/bar type place with London themed decor – as I am in London on a daily basis, this wouldn’t be my usual choice of restaurant when abroad but hey, it did the job!
RELATED: Not all of our days in Luxembourg were quite so warm! Read about our day trip to Vianden which was absolutely beautiful despite the drizzly weather!
Next up on our list of hot-spots was the ever-popular Casemates du Bock, a series of tunnels and look out points weaving through the city’s fortified walls. While the tunnels aren’t as extensive as I first thought they would be, this certainly isn’t something that you should miss on a trip to Luxembourg!
The fortifications were built in the year 963 (which is pretty damn impressive in itself) and give a good insight to the history of the country.
The Casemates are free to enter if you have the Luxembourg Card (which I highly recommend for any trip to Luxembourg)!
We had some time to spare before our tour of the Palace and after spotting many gorgeous Instagram shots of the “Grund” area, obviously this was my next place of choice. As you can see, this day was adopting a bit of an “Instagram worthy viewpoints” theme and I am TOTALLY okay with this.
At this point, the relentless sun still wasn’t easing up. The obvious solution to this was to enjoy the view with an ice-cream and a drink!
Grund can be accessed via a long walk down from the main city centre or a few elevators down to the lower level. We decided to be lazy and take the elevator down from the Cité judiciaire and back up again to make sure that we could get back to the Palace in time for our tour!
It was finally time for us to take our tour of the Royal Palace. Unfortunately photos aren’t allowed inside, so I can’t show you just how lovely the Palace is – but that means you just have to visit it for yourself!
The Palace is only open to the public during the Summer months and I definitely recommend visiting if you are able to! Never fear, if you are visiting in Winter instead, apparently the City has fabulous Christmas markets, so you won’t be missing out!
Opposite the Palace is the famous Chocolate House! If the day was cooler, we would have definitely been popping in for a luxurious hot chocolate. Instead, we just had a look around and took some photos – the cake also looks incredible!
And with that, we grabbed some food and headed to the airport for our evening flight home!
While Luxembourg City is small, you won’t run out of things to do if you are only spending a day or two here. We decided to skip all of the museums because of our limited time frame. As it was such a hot day, we were travelling at a snails pace compared to normal; taking time to sit and drink/spend some time in the shade was very much needed during the day – you may be able to fit much more into a day than we did!
Have you ever been to Luxembourg City? How did you spend your time there?
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post and all thoughts are my own. However, I was kindly gifted a Luxembourg Card by the tourism board.
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We had a fabulous trip there a few years back. It’s so quaint. Glad you enjoyed it. The pics look great.
Yay – so glad you had a good trip! It is such a quaint little city/country!
Luxembourg wasn’t on my radar, but thanks to your post I really changed my mind. What an interesting place! (not to mention the Chocolate House :D)
Haha – a chocolate house is a good enough reason for me to visit anywhere 😉
Wow the architecture is pretty crazy over there, I love it! I haven't been yet but I'm strongly considering it because it's easy to get cheap flights or train tickets from Paris! I thought there might not be too much to see but you proved me wrong so…. might go there soon 😉
Definitely do it! Luxembourg is a really easy country to get around, we visited the Moselle Valley and Vianden as well as the capital, so you will have plenty to explore! 🙂
You had me at Chocolate House. Luxembourg City looks charming. We also like to start our day early, and on our last trip (to Japan) we found that many of the tourist sites didn't open until 10am either. We ended up wandering around exploring the streets waiting for things to open each morning. Which is a fun activity, as well!
Ooo that's interesting to know! My boyfriend really wants to visit Japan, so I look forward to the lay-ins 😉
I thought Luxembourg was GORGEOUS when I was there!
Hadas | The Fashion Matters- Luxury travel and fashion blog
It really is a gorgeous little country!
What a great overview and so timely – the weather looked wonderful for your trip, I think we'd try and tie in the wine tasting trip too!
The weather really was beautiful! Albeit sometimes a little too hot (which isn't a bad thing – we stopped for lots of ice cream)!
Love your website and great tips on Luxembourg! I’m on a tight budget and will visit for a day trip next month. Is the palace is worth the price? Is the Luxembourg card worth it for a day trip? (Ps. I love museums)
Hi Kimberley – thanks so much for your comment. I think that the palace is free? Assuming you will be spending your entire day in Luxembourg City (I don’t think you’ll have much time to go elsewhere), I don’t think you’ll need a Luxembourg card (particularly as you’ve said you love museums, the majority of which are free). I have an article about the Luxembourg Card and how great it was for us, but the majority of our savings were outside of Luxembourg City.