Our first stop yesterday was in the town of Bastogne... still in Belgium, but near the Luxembourg border. There, my father had taken one single photo back in 1954, and we wanted to see if we could match it up.
Bastogne was one of the main towns defended by the Americans during a WWII campaign called Battle of the Bulge.
WWII Sherman Tank in 1954.
The same Sherman Tank in 2022.
The statue of General McAuliffe is now moved off to the side...
The town has not forgotten the Americans who helped them.
Fountain in Bastogne.
Church in Bastogne.
Main Street Bastogne.
From there, we carried on into Luxembourg, country #56 for us.
I had found a motorhome aire in the town of Redange that has free electricity... which is very nice to have with the temperatures the way they are so that we can use our electric heater. And we have learned that some of these aires can get filled up quite quickly, and if you want to guarantee yourself a spot it is best to arrive around noon.
And we did get a nice spot. It's just a parking lot, but it'll do fine for a couple of reasons. It's a short walk to a major, well stocked grocery store. And, we can take the bus from here into Luxembourg City.
We have three more photos to match up in Luxembourg City. We are parked up about 40 kms (25 miles) from the city center, but the buses are free! In fact, all public transportation in the entire country of Luxembourg is totally free. Wow.
Yesterday's drive.
So we are headed into the city this morning. We could easily spend more time in Luxembourg. But the weather is forcing us further south. We need to put some miles on over the next few days!
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Huge price drop on the 6 Quart Instant Pot.
And in Canada...
First I knew of this:
ReplyDelete"With its population set to surpass 690,000 by 2030, Luxembourg risks choking on its automobiles. To curb its driving addiction, this small country is trying an ambitious idea: On Feb. 29, 2020, it became the first nation in the world to make all public transit entirely free at point of use."
I wonder what the cost is?
Yes, that is what Kevin had read as well and we aren't so sure that it is helping to reduce the amount of cars or not because there certainly seemed to be lots of cars driving in around Luxembourg City but then we have no idea what it would have been like before they implemented this change. Kevin said that it was costing them about 550 million Euros a year. While we were on the bus though, we were thinking that, they are probably hoping to spend less on road work and they don't have to spend money on whatever payment system that they would have had to use or upgrade. We think it is a great idea but we're not sure whether other countries/states/cities will pick up on this or not.
DeleteKevin was just doing a little more reading into this and in fact found out that the actual running of the transportation system costs them around 550 million Euros a year but they were only bringing in around $41 million Euros a year in ticket sales the rest was all subsided by the government so in actual fact it is really only costing them the loss of the tickets sales.
DeleteHere in Phoenix, most government workers and some major employers issue bus tickets for their employees to use. I retired working for Uncle Sam and I made sure I rode the bus most of the time. Occasionally, I'd run late getting kids off to school so I had to drive in and it was always a hassle to find parking and parking lots were not cheap. I actually like riding the bus because it gave me a chance to relax before getting to work and coming home. I'd love to visit a city with free transportation. Some cities here in USA have some tree transportation but short rides i.e. the tram in Seattle, Las Vegas, etc.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any workers in the Government of Canada are given bus fares for free, not even sure if they get a discount other than the bus workers themselves. I used to take the bus to work myself if I worked on a route that wasn't out of the way otherwise I drove. Personally like you, I enjoyed the bus more because then I could just relax before or after work.
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