Metz - Northeastern France

Dennis and his family invited me to go drop off their son, Maxime -for la Toussaint break- at his grandmother's house in Metz.  So we were there on a Sunday.  Mostly everything was closed, except for the cathedral and a few cafés.  We decided to go see the cathedral.  I didn't know anything about it! 

As we were looking for a "free" parking space I saw the cathedral from the car and got soon very interested.   I mean, look at the gothic style architecture, flying buttresses, stained glass windows, etc. Quite a jewel!  It was a must to take a picture in front of it!

Once inside the church, I found out that there was a stained glass window done by a well-known Russian-French painter: Marc Chagall. Not only that! One part of this window had been broken, yes, BROKEN, by what Jay Leno calls and "IDIOT burglar" who probably had no idea what he was breaking. He wanted to get into the church so he could steal from the shop.   Now the window has one blank square that reads "Vitrail en cours de restauration."  Voici l'évidence!  Look at them!

Certainly, the cost of repairing this window will exceed that of the amount of merchandise this thief stole!  Even worse, tourists like me, have to "put up" with having a picture of an "incomplete" work of art.  I am thinking "lawsuit".  :-)

As I went out of the cathedral, I saw these two signs.  The plaza in front of the cathedral used to be Place de la Cathédrale. It is now Place Jean-Paul II.  Metz welcomed the Pope on October 10th 1988.  Interesting!

  Yakima had welcomed me on August 27th 1988, 48 days earlier!  (from Mexico, of course!)

La Toussaint

Since we're in the Vacances et voyages section.   I shall tell you that students have a break every seven weeks (of classes).  So our first break was All Saints Day (from October 25 to November 4th) and here's how I spent my vacation. 

First of all, Kim (one of the 5 US teachers on exchange, living in Montpellier) and I had planned to spend a few days here in Franche-Comté and the rest in Montpellier (Region: Languedoc-Rouissillon), south France.

     While in our four-day-tour of the Franche-Comté region, we visited: Basel, Switzerland; Épinal, Colmar, Belfort, and Beaune (in the Burgundy region - west of Franche-Comté).  Below are some pictures we took while in Switzerland.

                               

Eatin' candy- given to us by a bank teller!  It was good at first, but we discovered it had a sort of peanut butter mix filling. Pas bien!                 We went to Basel to see the Autumn market.    The Autumn market is just that, a bunch of (sorry for the expression) merchants selling all kinds of merchandise, from candy to leather goods, to toys, to anything you can imagine!  It was nice and warm as you can see on the picture above!                                                       

Transportation- In Europe, if the city where you live has buses as means of transportation, it means it is not 'modern'.  If the city has tramways, it means the city is up to date on transportation.  As you see by these pictures, Basel is a very modern city, just look at the colorful tramways they have.  

With the looks of the tramway on the left picture; I could only imagine the directions you get if you want to go downtown.  "Oh, yeah, take the pig to go downtown." or "The pig will take you downtown."

Bikes - a very popular means of transportation in Europe.   Gas is expensive, so any means of transportation other than cars will be good!

Look at this sign for public urinals!