Wing'in It: Metz, France

I am a bit behind in my blogging...

Life has been incredibly interesting as of late. Interesting in a wonderful way, but as good as I am at multi-tasking, I've fallen behind so I'm trying to catch up a bit.

At the beginning of January we were able to go to Metz, France. It was really awesome and the kids went picture crazy again. (Gee, wonder where they get that from? I have no idea...) They came up with a ton of excellent shots, (and when I say tons, I'm saying in the range of 600 or so.) There are slightly fewer than that in this post...but there are a lot so settle in and off we go to Metz!

While we were driving into the city and looking for a place to park, we passed a beautiful church and I saw, (out of the corner of my eye as I was following Steven in the Audi and trying to stick close to the bumper of our BMW) a beautiful river with swans swimming around it. This was what we headed out to find once we were parked and on foot.

The river we saw happened to be the Moselle, and the church was the Temple Neuf.

Part of our gang: Anya, Chris and Suzanna Gould...then there's me, (looking up at St. Etienne Cathedral), Steven and Scott.

This is the cathedral I was looking at. Can you blame me? It towers boldly over the rooftops of the buildings that sit along the bank of the Moselle River.

The Temple Neuf

There are some scary pigeons living in Metz. One in the tunnel below scared the heck out of Steven. It was dark and the pigeon fluttered its wings and my husband jumped a foot off the ground. It entertained me, it truly did. I kept him safe, though. I'm tough like that.

It didn't take us long to find the swans. They were quiet beautiful and were in the mood to show off.

Anya had about a dozen of them following her as she walked. They wanted treats but the only food we were carrying was chocolate. We were thinking that chocolate wasn't the best thing for a swan's digestive system.

Wow...I think I'm seeing yet another shot that needs to be enlarged... The Temple Neuf on its island on the Moselle River with just a couple of its feathered inhabitants.

There was so much to love about this city. This, I thought, was pretty spectacular...

St. Etienne Cathedral, or St. Stephen Cathedral if your French is a bit rusty.

Anya, Chris, Steve and Suzanna Gould at St. Etienne's.

Then it was the Wings' turn for a photo...

This cathedral has a nickname...it's called La Lanterne du Bon Dieux which means the Good Lord's Lantern. It's not hard to understand why.

Maya made an interesting observation while standing in this church. She said that many of the cathedrals she's seen since coming to Europe have made her feel as though she was in the belly of a whale. The long middle section does look a lot like the spine of a giant fish. Creative, this child.

That's one big organ.

Only steps away from the front doors of St. Etienne Cathedral was the marche couvert, or covered market. We wandered inside to take a look.

Back outside again, we had to take one more shot of St. Stephen's before we found somewhere to eat lunch. (Sightseeing is hungry work!)

We wound up eating on a very famous street in Metz. (I didn't actually know that until I came home and did my research for the blog.) We ate in a little restaurant on Taison Street where the symbol of the city, the Graoully Dragon, hangs above those walking below.