Tony and I have been married for 5 years – I just cannot believe it!  We started a tradition of recreating one of our wedding photos every year in a different city.  We love it because we know that we will change over the years, perhaps adding children (and a few pounds).  It will also force us to visit one new place every year, wherever we are in our lives.  For our 5th wedding anniversary we wanted to make it extra special.  We took a road trip to Dusseldorf with our son (Clark) and hired a professional photographer to capture our moment.

We arrived fairly late but dusk was absolutely gorgeous.  We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Dusseldorf which sits right at the split of the Rhine river.

We liked the city right away.  Both of us had been here before but neither had a chance to really explore it.  We took Clark with us across us the bridge and enjoyed a lovely meal outside.

Saturday we spent more time walking through the downtown area of the city.  According to Wikipedia, “Düsseldorf is an international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs.”  Along the river, there were tons of outdoor bars and restaurants and we picked one at random to for a beer and pizza.

Downtown was very busy – lots of stores, restaurants, cafes, etc.  There was a beautiful church we walked passed as well that really caught my attention.

Dusseldorf is also know to have a large Japanese population and delicious sushi, so we made sure to indulge for dinner on both Saturday night and Sunday night.  Each time we ate at the hotel restaurant because it was so good!  We didn’t want to mess with perfection.  🙂

Sunday at dusk was our photoshoot.  We hired Yvonne Zemke, a local wedding photographer, and it was the best decision we could have made.  Her photos were absolutely incredible and I actually started crying when I first viewed them.

What surprised me as well was how intimate the public photo shoot was – Tony had to hold me for a good couple minutes to get the perfect shot and our lips touched for a long time.  We got to giggle at nothing but that only made us laugh harder, and having Clark next to us was a constant reminder of how our family had grown and changed over the last 5 years.

I would do this again in a second and Yvonne was worth every penny.

We took off back to Zurich on Monday, and that is where Luxembourg comes in.  We bumped into lots of traffic on the way up and wanted to avoid getting stuck again on the way home.  We looked on the map and saw Luxembourg, a tiny country above France and thought, “why not?”

The detour took a couple hours but allowed us to see a whole new country we probably would not have visited otherwise.  AND we avoided traffic, the whole intent of the trip in the first place.

Luxembourg is an interesting place.  It’s sandwiched between Belgium, Germany and France, and all the people we interacted with spoke French.  It only has 3 districts or provinces, and 800 people in its military – it’s that tiny.

We thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and a French inspired lunch.  It was certainly the best rest stop we’d ever had.

And that was our lovely trip.  Looking forward to our next adventure.