Strasbourg

We reached Strasbourg on Sunday night, and it was FREEZING. I think the temperature was about -5 degrees and we had to walk about 20 minutes to the hostel.Brrrr.

The weather in Strasbourg, however, got better in the morning.


Palais de Justice





Wonderful weather.





Place de la republique.


Some really funky looking buildings in Strasbourg. Strasbourg was once a german ville until it was liberated by France in WW2.


There is a HUGE cathedral in Strasbourg. Like, real huge.



One of the horlorge in the Church. At 1230, the little dolls on the clock will start to dance. I waited to watch it and it was.... so so only.


See the two statues behind me? The one on the left represents the old testament of the bible and the one on the right represents the new testament.

Well, the weather got Reeeally crummy towards the afternoon. It was snowing really badly and it got REEEALLY cold. We headed over to a little island called petite france after watching the little dolls dance.





The german-inspired buildings.

Ok I'm kinda lazy to upload more photos and write more stuff. To cut the long story short, we got to the train station around 5ish to catch our 5 hour train back to lyon.

Nice TGV station.

Nancy

Nancy, pronounced as "nun-cy" here.

To me, nancy wasn't that fantastic. Just a so so ville, but just like every ville, there is that special place in Nancy that is a must see.

Damn these french are smart. They disperse all the attractions in different villes to make you travel more to see them. Why can't they put all in one place!:P


inside of a church


statue.


Credit lyonnais building.
For some strange reason, some buildings which are attractions were taken over by banks. We were looking at the BNP paribas, societe generale and Credit Lyonnais buildings.


Inside of the credit lyonnais building. So chic, hor?



Protestant temple.


We had a pretty decent traditional 3 course lunch. I had the "honour" of ordering food in french. I had learnt how to do that like, eons ago in Alliance Francais, and I forgot how to say "medium rare" in french. :( I only knew bien cuite and Bleue.

None-the-less, the food was yummy. :)

After lunch, my aunt and my mom went to the museum with Yangfang and Yaochen, while I went on my own to explore more of nancy.

Porte Desilles at place du luxembourg, dedicated to military men who died for the country in indochine and korea.


place de la citedelle.


Church.


Palais Ducal.


The courtyard of the palais.

There was a huge park behind the palais, the parc de la pepiniere.

Garden clock. Reminds me of the one I saw in Geneva.


There was another FREE ZOO there. Darn, there are so many free zoos in france. I saw some monkeys from our beloved neighbour, Java.


Place de la carriere... which leads to the famous Place stanslas.


Check out the golden gates.


I love blue skies.


Place Stanlas, to me, is the only attraction of nancy. This is one of the side gates, and this picture was taken in the morning, when it was cloudy. I went to place stanlas twice that day.


Another gate, picture taken in the noon. Check out the goooold! :D


Goooold.


another picture taken during the cloudy morning. Place Stanlas is really really huge.

Ok I am obviously too lazy to upload more photos or type alot. just enjoy the pictures, lah!

Metz

We took a day trip to Metz on Sat. I thought that Metz was really beautiful. It helped that the weather was good that day.



Porte des Allemands.


St Eucaire church.


me, mom, aunt. I was wearing 6 layers of clothes because all my clothes were pretty thin. I looked like a giant mash mellow the whole trip.


Saint Clement church.


The side of it.


This is the opera theatre. Nice hor?


The courtyard outside the opera house.


Temple Neuf.

The main attraction of Metz would have to be the hugeeeee cathedrale. It is the third highest church in France and has the world's most important collection of Stained glass windows. (The two higher churches in France are in damn ulu places).


Woooooooooooooooow.


Stained glass.


There was a rehearsal for the Easter Sunday ceremony (to be broadcast live on sunday on TV3) going on. We saw lots of TV crew around playing with the lighting and stuff, and we also got to see the easter sunday procession =).
We managed to catch the live telecast from this cathedral the next day at the hotel.


Esplanade


Palais de Justice.


Arsenal, now a concert hall.


There was a little hole at the courtyard of the Arsenal for people to throw money to these warriors who looked strangely very much like the terracotta warriors instead of french army officers.:P

We left Metz that night and headed over to Nancy.