Luxembourg and Mons

Today we headed out early to the first capitol city of 5 that we will be going to while we are here.  Luxembourg, Luxemburg was our first stop to visit the American Cemetary there, where General George Patton's grave is located.  General Patton wanted to be buried with his troops, not in Arlington, so his final resting place is in Luxemburg.

There are a lot of really nice memorials in the cemetary.  Unfortunately they are doing restoration work to some of them and expanding the memorial, so we were not able to get close to them.  Thankfully Jeff had his long range lens and we were able to get some nice pictures.

Here is General Patton's tombstone.  The cemetary is fashioned after Arlington, so all of the tombstones are the same.  The only exception are the tombstones for the Jewish soldiers, which are the Star of David.

There are also soliders buried there that are unknown.  I loved the saying that marked their graves.

After visiting the cemetary we headed into central Luxembourg to the Christmas market.  This was a great market!  We were able to find lots of goodies here.  Morgan enjoyed some chocolate covered clementines...

And the Nativity Scene,

And the Santa train!

Kathie found her favorite thing in the world, Santa!

After finishing our shopping at the Christmas market, we got back in the car and headed into Belgium to visit Mons, the small town that was right outside of the Supreme Headquarters for Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) where we lived in the late 1990s.  Since we couldn't get on the SHAPE compound, we just went straight to Mons.  Below is St. Wadreau, the Cathedral in Mons where Jeff and I graduated.  SHAPE High School is the only non-secular organization that is allowed to use the cathedral.

It started raining (surprise surprise) again while we were in Mons.  Then it started to hail.  Cecelia and I thought we ought to commemorate the sunshine/rain/hail day with a picture :)



Before heading home, we had to visit the Mons Monkey, a small monkey statue that is the unofficial mascot of the town.  Legend says if you rub the monkey's head you get good luck!

We did have a few rain free moments where the adults became kids and had a little fun with the statues in both Luxembourg (top picture) and Mons (bottom picture).

We are all pretty exhausted after 5 days of constant running and traveling.  I think tomorrow we are going to take it easy.  Dad and Patrick are both sick, so they could probably use a day to rest and get over the crud.