Yup, today I crossed the 46th country off my list.

I was determined to get to Luxembourg on this trip.   I mean I was literally in the country right next door and it would be kind of cool to cross another country off the list.

I took a long bus ride there, ate some lunch, did a walking tour, and then took another long bus ride back.

It was a very, very long day.

The bus there

I woke up at 7am this morning and, once again, beat the 7:15 alarm I had set.

You know it’s going to be a long day when you’re starting at 7am.   Spoiler alert, the next two days are even earlier starts.

After getting washed up and organized, I munched down on that extra breakfast sandwich I had made at yesterday’s breakfast buffet at the hostel.

By 7:45 I was out the door walking towards a city bus that would take me a short ride to where my long distance bus, Flixbus, was waiting for me about a 6 minute walk away.

Of course, me being me, I misread the time the Flixbus was leaving so instead of a casual 6 minute walk there, I did a 2 minute sprint to get to the bus just in the nick of time.

The ride to Luxembourg would be close to 4 hours.   Luckily there was free wifi on board so I actually typed last nights blog up while in transit.

After the blog was finished, I turned to double checking I had everything all planned out for the next two days.

It turns out, it was not…

A big helping of stress

The next two days are very heavy on transport.   Too much.   In hindsight I wish I had planned this upcoming part of my trip differently but what’s done is done and I just gotta roll with it.

Tomorrow I fly from Brussels to Budapest, spend the evening there, and then early in the morning I catch another flight to Copenhagen where I’ll stay the last two days of my trip before flying home.

So, for tomorrow I have to get to the train station, take the train from Antwerp to the Brussels airport, take the flight and then take a bus from the Budapest airport to where my hostel is.

Like I said, an intense and long travel day.

I was double checking which trains and buses to take and when to take them and then I discovered my mistake.

My flight from Brussels isn’t from their main airport (BRU) which I had stupidly assumed.   Nope, it was from the Charleroi airport about 50km further south.

Oh my God!

What a colossal f up!

All these flights I’ve been on over the years and I’ve never done this before.

Thank God I found this mistake today and not tomorrow when I showed up at the wrong airport.   That would have been an absolute catastrophe.

Even still, it led to alot of stress over the next couple hours on the bus.

Here I was thinking I had it all figured out and now I found myself scrambling to figure out how to make it all work.

Long story short, I now have to leave the hostel at 7:45 tomorrow morning instead of the 9:00 I had planned.   Yeah, the trip to the other airport is going to take almost 90 minutes longer than I had thought.

I tell ya, too many unforced errors on this trip.   Gotta tighten that up for the next one.

A rushed lunch, again

At 1pm we finally arrived in Luxembourg.

The tour didn’t start until 2pm so I had a good hour to eat some lunch.

A good hour he says…

Hahahahahaha

I went to a highly rated gluten free place near the station and excitedly waited behind a family getting their order in front of me.   It was almost 10 minutes before I got to the counter only to find that they had literally just ordered the last sandwich bread available that day.

I mean, points for having fresh bread every day but, damn, that absolutely sucked.

Plan B.

I quickly found another close by restaurant also offering gluten free food and made my way there.   I ordered a salmon focaccia sandwich and a gluten free lemon meringue tart.

I waited in anticipation for my lunch.

And waited…

And waited…

20 minutes later my lunch finally arrived at my table.

By then I only had a scant 5 minutes to eat my lunch and run.

Like I said, gotta tighten stuff up for next trip.   Lessons learned.

Walking tour

Geez, this blog is already so long and I haven’t even gotten to the walking tour yet.

I mean, let’s be honest, if you wanted to read a blog about the city of Luxembourg and all its’ highlights that’s been well researched and articulately written then this is totally the wrong blog for you.

My blog is more of a personal journal so what you read is literally all the little ins and outs that go on while I backpack.   Some are good.   Some are bad.   But they are all my own honest experiences.

Truth is, this is going to be the shortest section of the blog.

So, yeah, the walking tour…

Okay, so, before I left for this trip I looked up ways to see Luxembourg.   Sadly there were no free walking tours so I was left with three choices.

I could either go with a tour company, go there on my own and just walk around, or do a hybrid.

If you know me, then you know I totally chose the hybrid.   I would go there on my own but then book a 15€ ($22) walking tour with the Luxembourg Tourist Office.

The tour took us through the different parts of the city and we learned a bit about the history of the Luxembourgs.

I’ll be honest, I faded pretty hard during this tour and kind of zoned out what the guide was saying and just spent time taking photos.

The early morning combined with a long bus ride and sun beating down on me had worn me out.   In hindsight, I would have planned this differently.

Also I haven’t had any days in this trip where I did nothing and I’m thinking moving forward on trips that I really need to pencil in a do nothing day every few days just to sit at the hostel and do absolutely nothing.

Another lesson learned.

I’ll be so ready for my next trip…

Ice cream solves everything

After the tour ended at 4pm, I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to catch my bus ride home at 4:35 unless I raced like a madman and I had had enough of that today.

Instead, I rebooked for the next departure a little more than an hour later.

After all the heat today, I wanted some ice cream.   I looked for a bit but didn’t come across any ice cream shops so I did the next best thing – I found a supermarket.

Sadly I can’t have the single serving ice cream bars because, ya know, gluten.   I did, however, find some nice little mini cups of ice cream in the freezer section.   I bought a strawberry and a vanilla ice cream along with a pack of wooden spoons to eat them with.

Heaven!

I sat there relaxed, probably for the first time today, just eating ice cream and watching the world go by.

And, ya know what?   That’s a pretty good place to end the blog…