Metz in daylight

I am a bit late getting this up, but we had a couple of hours to explore Metz by daylight after our night enjoying the Christmas Market and I want to share some photos of this lovely small city.

We started off by hunting down the bridge?  castle? over the rive that so often shows up in photos of the area. It shows up for good reason--it is lovely!

After oohig and aahing a bit, we continued walking along the river (it appears that Minions are everywhere-even France):

Then we headed into town to work our way towards the cathedral, enjoying the architecture along the way:

Then we roudned the corner to the front of a church and it felt like being punched in the gut to see a memorial to Paris victims--I can only assume Marie and Mathias were a local couple who either moved to the city, or were there visiting--likely to see the concert.  So tragic:

After a few solemn moments, we decided to continue exploring and working towards the cathedral and enjoying the lovely city.  I absolutely loved the two little boys peering in the bakery window as the proprietor set out the fresh baked goods.

And then we made it to the cathedral--I had to get a photo of the flying buttresses; I always thought those sounded so cool when we learned about then in school way back when.  It was nice to be inside as services were just finishing up (we waited to move forward until after, sadly a fair number of tourists did not)--and I enjoyed seeing the advent wreath lit up for the second Sunday.

By the time we finished at the cathedral it was time for us to head home.  We did pull over so I could snap some photos of Le Temple Neuf from the side of the road---we will be sure to make time to really visit it on our next trip to Metz (and there WILL be more trips):

--Hadley