The 7 best day trips from Luxembourg City, ranked

The top three

1. Vianden. The castle on its ridge above the Our is the country's most photogenic sight; the chairlift and the Victor Hugo house round it out. Bus 570 from Ettelbruck, roughly 90 minutes door to door. 2. Echternach and the Mullerthal. Combine the basilica town with a short walk through the sandstone gorges around Schiessentümpel — you can do both in six hours. 3. Trier, Germany. Twenty-five minutes by regional train from Wasserbillig, and you get Roman ruins (Porta Nigra, the baths, the amphitheatre) at a scale Luxembourg simply doesn’t have.

These three are the ones I’d send a first-time visitor on before anything else. Vianden is the postcard, Mullerthal is the landscape, Trier is the history lesson.

The next four

4. Clervaux for the Family of Man photography exhibition in the castle — a UNESCO Memory of the World listing and much better than it sounds. 5. Remich and the Moselle for a river cruise plus a crémant tasting at Caves St Martin or Bernard-Massard in Grevenmacher. 6. Bastogne in Belgian Ardennes for the Battle of the Bulge museum, an hour by car. 7. Metz in France for the Centre Pompidou-Metz and a very walkable centre, 50 minutes by TGV. Anything past number seven starts to feel like a stretch for a single day.