A bit of poetic license gives us today’s title since the Belgian city of Liège actually has an accent grave but “siege” is a true part of its history. Given that there’s evidence of 9000 years of human habitation in the city, there have been plenty of opportunities for invaders to take over, notably in the 15th century and again in WWI. All of those conflicts meant that much of the city has been destroyed over the centuries yet museums have flourished to maintain a link to the past. The guidebook we were following suggested starting with the cathedral since it was one structure that has remained fairly intact and can provide a tangible historic connection.

After a few days in Luxembourg we took the train across the border into Belgium to explore some cities there. We started with the one that a guidebook described as, “visually stunning” with the bonus of being the hometown of the inventor of the saxophone—an instrument that I played (badly) a long time ago. How could we resist? But with this being Belgium there were bound to be other temptations too such as chocolate, beer, waffles, and fries and we went in search of a local speciality—Couque de Dinant.

Within the city of Luxembourg we’d had access to all three forms of its free public transit system: bus, tram, and funicular. Now we were going to move out into the country of Luxembourg to visit two historic locations, but like in the previous few days this wasn’t going to cost a centime to get there. The first day would require a train and then a connecting bus to Vianden, that one guide book described as, “…quite simply, the most picturesque little town in the Grand Duchy….” The next day we were on a train for about an hour to medieval Clervaux to see its 12-century castle (its garden view is in this paragraph) and the Benedictine Abbey.