Visiting St. Nickolaus

Christmas is in the air!!!  This past weekend we have paid a visit to a local Santa.  Here is Luxembourg, St. Nickolaus is the one kids adore.   He brings the toys to the kids in the wee hours of the night.   Most of the families have a major "family get togethers" on that day.  On December 25th, kids receive clothes and small things from their parents.

With this said, we went to visit "Santa"  on a special Christmas Train.  This activity is organized in this part of Luxembourg only one weekend, last week end in November.

 

This is very popular activity.  Reservations must be made online, way in advance.

 

We enjoyed looking at the old trains outside....

 

...and inside, while we waited in line to see St. Nick.

 

In order for kids to get their candy, we received two "coupons" in the mail with the train tickets.

 

Next to St. Nick is Black Peter.  According to the local tradition, Black Peter makes sure that kids behave and lets St. Nick know if someone is not deserving of gifts.

 

Ian was very hesitant to get too close, but his sister made things better.

 

And those chocolates are so worth it ;))

 

 

And now Ian is chomping down the chocolate Santa.

 

We are back outside handing out, testing out old trains.

 

More of Black Peters.  Later on these guys got in the train with us, to check on those kiddos.

It was a fun trip.  Simple, but COOL, old train.  Now we need to see how long that chocolate will last.

The castle around the corner...

... or so it seems.  During our last trip to Perl, Germany (our grocery shopping destination), my husband did the research on our GPS for the  Local Attractions. And Malbrouck Castle came up.   The weather on that day was typical for this season, gloomy and rainy, however this discovery cheered us up.

This castle has been fully renovated about 15 years ago and now it also hosts as a gallery for a variety of artists throughout the year. This time is  was hosting the exposition by Claude Weisbuch.

Since the weather was not good, kids had fun walking up and down the stairs (which is much more exercise that they would have had otherwise)

 

The restoration of this castle took 8 years and was done by the crew of 30 men.  It is amazing.

 

This was the ceiling in one of the rooms.

 

It was raining, so this is not the best picture, but the view was breathtaking. 

 

It is not our first castle but it never seem to amaze me the amount of history, architecture and culture that each and every one of these castles has.

 

Summer Recap

Ok, I feel that I did not share much about our summer.  It seems that after Ashley's parents left, the summer started to fly by in its unfair fashion.  After a LOT OF STRESS of going through visa applications, my parents came here for a visit as well.  We did a lot of shopping (my kids were sooo good through it all).  I have to admit that it was fun to show our parents were we live and how we are adjusting to the European way of life.  Here are some pics from theirs and my brother's visits.

The City of Luxembourg had a Marilyn Monroe month with a lot of events going on.  We enjoyed looking at some pictures that were displayed in the downtown.

 

Dining at our friends house

 

My brother...

Cathedral in Metz, France

We stumbled upon a little multicultural festival...  We thought these were Romanian dancers...

 

....followed by the Bulgarians

 

My brother and my kids by the spaceship swimming pool in Strassen

Street Art in the downtown Luxembourg

 

My parents by the cathedral in Trier, Germany

 



Train ride from Trier.  

 

Street theater in the Luxembourg City

 

 

Tractor Time in Contern

This past weekend we have visited another little town that has a little festival going on.  It is really neat that these small communities organize events like this Apple Fest on a regular basis.  This lets our family visit small communities and see for ourselves the life on the outskirts of the big city life.

This post is really going to be an eye candy for everyone who loves old tractors because we saw a LOT.

 

A little break from tractors... our kids are going for a donkey ride ;))))