Day 28 Saturday, September 27, 2025
We drive a half hour to a free parking lot on the outskirts of Luxembourg city, then catch a bus to the downtown area. We should have realized something was wrong when we passed this interesting looking tower…we saw it when we drove to the parking lot. So…we caught the bus going the wrong way and ended up at different parking lot on the outskirts of the city! The bus driver told us where to get the tram we now need to use to get into the city. Luckily all the public transportation in Luxembourg is free!
We pass this renovation site on the way to downtown. I am impressed that buildings are almost always repaired, not demolished.
Walking downtown we pass a Cartier store. The necklace is ‘only’ 191,000€, the two bracelets are 26,900€ and 36,200€ and the ring is 113,000€…just a wee bit out of my price range!
We find a Post Office to buy stamps. While we are writing on the postcards, my purse falls down between the counter and the wall…a narrow space less than a foot wide! I have to ask the security guard to come help. Even though his arms are much longer than mine he is just barely able to reach my purse. My phone fell out when he pulled my purse up but luckily it is on a cord attached to my purse so it didn’t fall to the bottom of the space behind the counter!
There is a big park downtown, at the base of high cliffs.
Yes, another church! The cathedral “Notre-Dame” of Luxembourg was built between 1613 and 1621 by the Jesuits. The stained glass windows make a stunning backdrop for the altar.
There are many paintings and tapestries in this cathedral, and the stone pillars are decorated with intricate carving.
I look up and there are paintings on the ceiling high above the nave.
We pass the National Monument in Memory of the Victims of the Shoah in Luxembourg (1940-1945). The monument was inaugurated on 17 June 2018. It is named after the Kaddish, one of the most famous Jewish prayers recited as part of mourning rituals in Judaism.
Luxembourg City has an upper plateau, which contains the historic Old Town, and a lower valley known as Grund. This area is home to some of the oldest and most picturesque buildings in the city, dating back to the 14th century. Take notice of the suspended platform on the right of this photo.
People are dining in the sky! I am not sure why anyone would want to do this. It does not appeal to me in the least, but for 325€ per person you can have lunch prepared by Michelin chefs 50 meters high above the ground!
We were in Luxembourg 46 years ago, but all I can remember is looking down from high walls onto the city, like we are doing here.
We take an elevator down to the lower part of town and cross a bridge on our way to the Natural History Museum.
I would not want to be a bus driver here, the streets are very narrow. 
We see our first halloween decorations.
The current St. John the Baptist church dates back to the 17″ century. Its rich Baroque furnishings are not its original ones, they were taken from other churches during the period after the French Revolution!
In the valley looking up at the upper city.
As we enter the Natural History Museum I am startled by the man sitting on the red couch. From a distance I thought he was a real person.
It isn’t a big museum and after a quick look around I find a spot with a chair to sit and draw while Bob explores the rest of the museum.
This room is a hodge lodge of stuffed animals…some look old and a bit worse for wear. 
Bob discovered an interesting fact about hedge hogs. “The European hedgehog is a nocturnal animal that is easy to recognize by its many spines. When faced with danger, it can curl up and form a “prickly ball”. Its luxembourgish name”Keisécker” (“cow sucker”) originates from a legend that hedgehogs sucked milk during the night from cow udders. Obviously this is not true as hedgehogs suffer from a lactose intolerance.”
On our walk to the bus we stop for another look down into one of the garden areas below the walls.
We caught the right bus back to our car but getting out of the parking lot was another thing! Thank heavens for Google maps! We might still be driving in circles trying to get back onto the highway!
We see four nuclear power plants on the way home. They always give me an eerie feeling. I wouldn’t want to be living anywhere near one of these.
It is getting dark on the drive home but we are treated to a lovely sunset.
No idea what kind of tree has these huge seed pods. Maybe someone can tell me?
We go past a street of shops with rather expensive merchandise, but I really wonder about these colour combinations!
The Alte Museum admission is only 1euro on Sundays! What a bargain. This is one half of the double staircase that leads to the exhibition rooms. 
We walk through the first door and I see these beautiful pastel paintings by Maurice Quentin La Tour, Jean-Étienne, Joseph Vivien and Rosalba Carriera! I need to find some books about these artists and study their paintings. Unfortunately there were lots of reflections in the glass covering these works. You can even see me in two of them!
One of the 46 rooms we visited today had lots of paintings of Venice, completed in the early 1700’s. I marvelled that Venice looked just the same then as it did when we visited a couple years ago. The only difference was the number of small boats in the canals and the clothing of the people in the paintings! There were another 13 rooms that were closed due to the installation of new exhibits.
This room was full of paintings by Rembrandt and Franz Hals…
I lost count of the number of rooms filled with work by Peter Paul Rubens… 
which Included a room with the huge painting of The Great Last Judgement.
and another with The Fall of the Damned, which is also very large. Rubens was a very productive artist!
Here is a close up of some of the damned souls.
Looking through the doorway, you can see the many more rooms we have yet to explore. There are ten large galleries in a row along the length of the museum, with many smaller galleries off of these. 
I liked how I could stand in front of the study for this Rubens painting and then look into the adjoining gallery and see the finished painting. There was a gallery full of studies, which I particularly liked. It is possible to see the way Rubens thought about and worked out his compositions.
This is a painting done by Leonardo da Vinci when he was only 23. I don’t remember seeing it before (in books).
And then there is Hieronymus Bosch with his very strange creatures, in this fragment of the Last Judgement. His works always has lots of details to examine closely.
We saw paintings by so many other artists I am familiar with: Holbein, Raffael, Botticelli, Titian, Van Dyk, and Velázquez, as well as many new artists that I liked as well.
and works by Cézanne, Gauguin, and several more Van Gogh’s.
A large painting by Ferdinand Hodler, TheTired of Life, really drew my attention. I will have to research this artist.
There was a Klimt. I am looking forward to visiting the Klimt Museum when we return to Vienna.
Here are my metro drawing from today…
and yesterdays drawings in the gardens we visited, which I forgot to post.
These workers are laying paving bricks for a huge plaza. We have not seen poured cement sidewalks or plazas here, they are all made with paving stones. It seems very labour intensive.
The Gemäldegalerie is our first stop today. This museum is near the Berlin Zoo and has one of the world’s leading collections of European paintings from the 13th to the 18th century. The quality of the artwork here is amazing. This is the first painting we see, part of an altar from 1437 telling the story of Jesus on the left, and Mary on the right. The white ‘baseboard’ in the photo comes almost mid-thigh on me, to give you an idea of the scale of the works.
The corner of one painting from 1444 shows two pregnant women, notice the babies depicted on their stomachs. I had never seen this symbolism before.
We both liked the Fountain of Youth by Lucas Cranach, 1546. This is not the style of his work that I am familiar with…
this is! I have always wondered at this artist’s creativity.
Wow!! This painting by Rogier van Der Weyen from 1440 is my absolute favourite of everything we have seen so far this trip. I absolutely love it and wish that the photo was able to convey the impact it has in person. I would have bought a print but it was almost $100 and I worried about getting it home safely. This is a painting I could live with forever.
I am fond of Frans Hals portraits and there was a whole room of them.
This artist must like them too. What a tough way to work though, on a little stool, holding such a large drawing board. I assume the museum does not allow easels.
I am excited to see this Vermeer from across the room, but then..
I notice The Girl with the Pearl Earring. I had no idea the this painting was in this museum. What a lovely surprise.
Anna Dorothea Therbusch, 1721-1782, is one of the few women artists who actually made a living as an artist. This is a self portrait.
There are Caravaggio’s here…
including this Botticellis Venus.
And there are Rembrandts, including these two famous self portraits.
I finally get to see these two tondos in person, the one on the left by Raffael (34″ diameter) and the one on the right by Botticelli (54″ diameter). I particularly like the Botticelli, his Madonnas are always so beautiful.
This was fun! I am so glad we visited the Gemäldegalerie, it was quite amazing.
After a picnic lunch we check out the Kunstgwerbe Museum nearby. I would love to have this beautiful geometry set from the 16th century.
This museum has lots of porcelain, furniture and church treasures, but we walk by all these. It is just too much to absorb.
A few items did catch our eye though. This is an elaborate portable kitchen from 1807, maybe used for camping? All the info is in German, so not sure.
These glazed porcelain figurines were part of a group of 15 that were awarded a gold medal at the 1900 International Exhibition in Paris. 
There was also an exhibit on Afro Hair, with some very different displays.
And finally, an interesting walk through women fashions through the ages.
Whew! and we aren’t finished yet. We catch a bus back across town to visit the oldest church in Berlin but the interior has been updated so much. It wasn’t what we were expecting, but still interesting. For some reason there was a rooster crowing inside the church? No idea what that was about.
We split up, Bob heads to the Bode Museum and I catch the metro to go life drawing. I pass this post with just a few posters wrapped around it on my way to drawing.
We were surprised at the detail of some of the1,300 ancient coins on display. The museum has more than 150,000 coins in its collection!
Bob snaps a photo of me sketching…
and then notices the shadows behind this bust. He is getting very ‘artsy’!
This Greek vase from 350 BC showing Perseus slaying a sea monster with a sickle is quite different in design than most of the vases we have seen.
The rotunda has a huge dome with a round skylight and has an incredible collection of sculptures on both levels.
In the next room this rather unusual drinking cup, is titled Hetaera Above the Chamber Pot!
This Funerary Lion just makes me smile…
and I love this statue of a mourning female servant from 330 B.C.
There is so much to see here, room after room filled with beautiful art.
The Torso of an Old Fisherman, from 200 B.C. is an example of Hellenistic sculpture representing ordinary people.
This statue of Aphrodite, 2nd Century B.C., is thought to be one of the most beautiful ancient terracottas in existence.
I think this collection of Middle Class Women from 325-150 B.C. is amazing. They were about 8 ” tall and are so detailed.
The Girl Playing Astragal, or knucklebone, is likely a funerary sculpture.
These 3rd Century A.D.mummy portraits from Roman tombs in Egypt were a surprise. We had never seen anything like them. They were painted with wax and tempera.
Another sculpture filled room.
We have seen Boy with a Thorn, or Spinario, several times in our travels…at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, in Rome and in Paris. In Rome we saw the original bronze sculpture that inspired the marble copies, It is a favourite of mine.
This looks like a painting,
but it is actually a mosaic! I held up a pen in the corner for scale so you can see how tiny the mosaics pieces are.
This sad little boy was likely on a tomb for a child.
On a long covered walkway to the next museum we see a wedding photo shoot. 
The Alte National Museum in Berlin features Nineteenth Century art with works by famous painters and sculptors. These are a few paintings that caught my eye, all by German painters that I am not familiar with. There were several paintings that are only partly finished. I found these very interesting, as it is possible to see how the artists approach the painting process.
There were some Renoirs, Pissaro’s and Carravagios, as well as Rodin’s The Thinker.
This sculpture was so lifelike and the pose was so natural. There is so much to see, and we have been at these two museums for over five hours!
This is the Alte National Museum, seen from the covered walkway.
As we walk to the bus we pass the Berliner Dom, the largest church in Berlin. This photo somehow makes me think of Notre Dame in Paris. 
I am went drawing tonight at a Meet Up Life Drawing session. Our model, Josephine, was very tall and thin which was challenging to draw. These are two minute poses.
This is something we don’t see at home…taking your IKEA purchase on public transportation! It has been a long busy day and we are both a bit tired.
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