Welcome to Chunnel Challenge 2011!

What is Chunnel Challenge?  It is an awesome roadtrip my friends and I are taking across Europe to London and back.  There may be personalized t-shirts made…

I have known my friends Todd and Rebecca for years.  I met Rebecca in boot camp many moons ago, and she met and married her husband Todd a few years later.

While Rebecca is by far my most responsible friend, she is also my quirkiest, which makes her absolutely fabulous.  Todd is a retired Marine but don’t let that fool you, he has his very own brand of quirkiness, and it fits perfectly with Rebecca.

The three of us decided to meet in Germany to start the trip, which is about an eight hour drive for me.  Except it turned into a 14 hour drive because all of Switzerland was one giant traffic jam.  I got caught in a mile long tunnel for an hour and I was convinced I was going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.  I finally made it to Germany and in the morning we started out for Luxembourg.

None of us had ever been to Luxembourg and we had no idea what to expect.  As soon as we got to Luxembourg City we found one of those green hop-on hop-off buses to get a tour of the city.

There are a lot of large sculptures/statues all over the city, like this giant chair.  I tried to google what the giant chair represents and I couldn’t find any mention of it.  Still cool though.

The city is very clean and walkable.  There are several streets off limits to cars.  Did you know that Luxembourg has the world’s highest GDP?  I didn’t.  In fact I didn’t know anything about this country before we arrived.  It is also apparently famous for its steel, which is not very exciting.

There are some beautiful churches and buildings all over the city.  This little church with the half horse/half knight statue is my favorite.

After spending the afternoon in Luxembourg city we headed out to the countryside to explore some smaller towns, and find a place to sleep.  We eventually found a hostel in Beaufort.  The hostel was only 20 Euro a night and we had a six person room to ourselves.

The town of Beaufort is tiny and has a medieval feel to it.  We had dinner and then went exploring for a little while before calling it a night.

We found this beautiful 12th century castle that we may visit in the daytime.

Luxembourg was a good start to our road trip, and we may stop again on our way back.  Next stop is Belgium!