One week in Luxembourg

Days 1-2: Luxembourg City

Base in the capital for the first two nights. Day one covers the Chemin de la Corniche, Bock Casemates (€7), the Grund and the Pfaffenthal lift. Day two is museums: the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art on Marché-aux-Poissons (€6) and MUDAM in Kirchberg (€7), reached by free tram. Eat cheaply at the Bouneweger Stuff in Bonnevoie (€12 mains) or splurge at Um Plateau in Clausen (€39 per person).

Base yourself at Hotel Simoncini or Grand Hotel Cravat, both an eight-minute walk from Gare Centrale and within €95-140 a night; step up to Sofitel Luxembourg Le Grand Ducal (from €180) for river views over the Alzette. Evenings belong to the Grund: cross the Pont du Château to the riverside bars along Rue Munster, then climb back via the Pfaffenthal lift, free and running until 2am on weekends. Skip the paid city bus tours — Luxembourg's trains, trams and buses have been free nationwide since 2020, so a €0 ride on tram line T1 to Kirchberg covers the same ground the coach operators charge €25 for.

Days 3-4: Mullerthal and Echternach

Move base to Echternach, the oldest town in the country, 45 minutes by bus 110 from the capital. Stay two nights at Hotel Le Pavillon (€82) or the youth hostel (€28 dorm). Hike Mullerthal Trail Route 2, an 11-mile loop through slot canyons and mossy sandstone at Schiessentümpel waterfall and the Wolfsschlucht crevice. Day four is a shorter loop from Berdorf via the Perekop and Kohler pinnacles. Rewards: schnitzel and Diekirch pilsner at Café Aal Echternoach for €16.

Route 2 is graded moderate but the sandstone staircases at the Wolfsschlucht are slick after rain, so pack proper boots rather than trainers; the full loop takes six to seven hours with stops. Book Hotel Le Pavillon at least a month ahead in September, when the Mullerthal's beech canopy turns and the trail fills with weekend hikers from Trier and Luxembourg City. If you have energy left on day three, the shorter Wolfsschlucht spur from Müllerthal village adds ninety minutes and passes the Predigtstuhl viewpoint. Skip the guided minibus tours advertised in Echternach at €45 — the trailheads are all reachable on foot from town.

Days 5-6: Vianden and the Our valley

Move to Vianden by bus 570 via Ettelbruck. Stay at Hotel Petry (€76) or Auberge Aal Veinen (€95). Vianden Castle (€10) deserves half a day; add the Victor Hugo house (€4) and the chairlift (€5). Day six, ride bus 663 up the Our valley to Stolzembourg's copper mine and continue to the Upper Sûre lake for a swim. Cross-border walkers can pick up the trail into the German Eifel; the Our river is the border and there's no checkpoint.

The castle's restoration, finished in 1977 after the counts of Vianden abandoned it in the eighteenth century, means most of what you see is rebuilt rather than ruined — still worth the €10 given the Salle des Chevaliers and the armoury. Victor Hugo lodged at the house on the Marché-aux-Poissons for three weeks in 1871 while exiled; the small museum covers that stay in more depth than most visitors expect. Auberge Aal Veinen suits a food-focused stay, with a restaurant serving Ardennes ham and judd mat gaardebounen from €18. The Upper Sûre lake at Lultzhausen, forty minutes further by car, is the better swim if Stolzembourg's stretch of the Our looks too shallow.

Day 7: Moselle wine route

Return south via train to Wasserbillig, then bus 450 along the Moselle to Remich and Schengen. Taste crémant at Domaine Alice Hartmann in Wormeldange (€13 for four wines) or the cooperative Vinsmoselle in Grevenmacher. Schengen has the small European Museum (€4) marking the 1985 border agreement. End the week with dinner at Restaurant Léa Linster in Frisange (€82 tasting) or back in the capital for a last walk along the Corniche at sunset.

Wormeldange and Grevenmacher sit on the Route du Vin cycle path, a flat 26-mile stretch from Schengen to Wasserbillig that rental shops in Remich hire out for €18 a day — a realistic add-on if day seven feels rushed. Riesling is the grape to chase here rather than the exported Pinot Gris; ask for a dry Riesling from the Wormeldange Koeppchen slope, one of the Moselle's few grand premier cru sites. Skip the bottled crémant sold in Luxembourg City supermarkets and buy direct at the cooperative instead, where a bottle costs €9-14 versus €20 in the capital. If trains back to the city run late, the last connection from Wasserbillig is usually just before midnight.

Where to sleep in the capital

If you would rather stay in Luxembourg City for all seven nights and day-trip by train, it works: every town in this itinerary is under 90 minutes away and the rail network is free. Hotel Parc Beaux Arts (from €110) sits two minutes from the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art, useful for day two. Park Inn by Radisson Luxembourg City (from €90) is the better value pick near the station, with bag storage for early checkouts before a Vianden or Echternach bus. For a splurge night bookending the trip, Hotel Le Place d'Armes Relais & Châteaux (from €280) puts you on the main square with a spa, worth one night rather than seven given the price jump over the mid-range options.

Business-district alternatives cluster around Kirchberg, a fifteen-minute tram ride from the old town: Novotel Luxembourg Kirchberg and Sofitel Luxembourg Europe both run €120-160 and suit anyone visiting MUDAM or the European institutions first. Mama Shelter Luxembourg, near the station, is the pick for solo travellers or anyone arriving late by train, with a bar that stays lively past midnight and rooms from €95. Whichever base you choose, book the city nights separately from the Echternach and Vianden legs — moving base costs nothing extra on the bus network and means you are not paying capital-city rates while sleeping in a trailhead village.

Getting between the four bases

The whole week runs on the RGTR bus network and CFL trains, both free in second class since Luxembourg abolished public transport fares in March 2020 — the only exception is first class, which costs a small supplement. Bus 110 to Echternach leaves from the Gare Centrale bus station roughly every thirty minutes on weekdays; bus 570 to Vianden runs via Ettelbruck, where a same-platform transfer keeps the journey under seventy minutes. Buy nothing: there are no tickets to buy. Download the mobiliteit.lu app before day one — it covers real-time departures for every line named in this itinerary and works offline once cached.

Luggage is the one friction point. None of the four bases has left-luggage lockers as reliable as Gare Centrale's, so pack for a rolling week rather than day-bag day trips, and change base only twice — city to Echternach, Echternach to Vianden, Vianden back through Wasserbillig — rather than doubling back. Drivers gain little: parking in Vianden and Echternach's old centres is limited and metered, while the bus network reaches every trailhead named above. The one case for a car is the Our valley run past Stolzembourg, where bus 663 runs only a handful of times a day and a rental gives more flexibility for the Upper Sûre detour.

What the week costs

Budget travellers can do this itinerary for €55-70 a day outside accommodation: transport is free, museum entries run €4-10, and a hiking-day lunch of bread, cheese and a Diekirch beer from a village épicerie rarely tops €10. Add €25-35 a night for hostel dorms in the city, Echternach or Vianden, or €80-120 for a simple double, and the full week lands near €700-900 per person including the Léa Linster splurge on day seven. Cutting that dinner for a Vinsmoselle tasting and a riverside sandwich in Remich saves roughly €60 without losing the wine-country afternoon.

Where the money actually goes is castles and museums, not transport or food: Vianden Castle, MUDAM, the Bock Casemates and the Victor Hugo house add up to about €30 across the week, a fraction of what a similar week of paid sights costs in Belgium or France next door. The single overpriced booking to avoid is a guided day tour from the capital to Vianden or Echternach — operators charge €60-90 for a route the free bus covers in under an hour. Spend the savings on one good dinner instead: Léa Linster's tasting menu or a Um Plateau splurge is the better use of the money this itinerary frees up.