Metz, Lorraine, France

The day after attending the Lorraine Mondial Balloon Festival, we headed to Metz.
Metz is my second official city visited in France, and was as charming as Paris, but with less people and just as much beauty.

Metz, France sits about 40 minutes from the German border. It's not a huge city, but not a small town. I honestly didn't know what to expect.

Often enough, most cities that are just outside of another country don't have a sense of architecture and culture of their own nationality like the cities closer to the middle of a country.

When we drove through Northern Italy, we noticed that many of the homes on the Italian side of the border (opposite of Austria) looked like traditional Austrian homes. The same was true for my visit to Salzburg; I felt as if I was still in Germany. Small cities on the other side of the Czech border from Germany have German influence, as well.

Metz was the exception. Metz definitely made me feel as if I were in France.

It was Sunday morning, and beautiful. The weather couldn't have been better. What also made our short visit to Metz special was the fact that we arrived early, and not many folks were wandering about. We had the city to ourselves, which is always a nice perk!

We parked the car and started to walk. The first thing on my very short list of things to see was Temple Neuf, and in that direction we went.

It didn't take long for us to stumble upon Temple Neuf. This adorable church sits on an island on the Moselle river. It's not open to tour, or even a common place of worship in the city, but it was definitely worth a stop.

The grounds of Temple Neuf are lush and perfect for a picnic (made me wish we thought of that). We saw a younger woman stop by to feed the swans with a basket full of baguettes. It may sound silly, but I was amused; a French lady, sitting on the Moselle, feeding swans baguettes. Ah, the life!

We moved on towards a large bridge, opposite of the island, so that I could see Temple Neuf sitting on the river. It's it's own smaller scaled way, the island reminds me of how Notre Dame in Paris sits on the Seine.

If you look closely, you can see the woman sitting on the wall feeding the swans.

We moved on to Metz's big church; The Cathedral of Metz, but of course I snapped pictures of randoms along the way.

The cathedral exterior is beautiful, but being as that it was a Sunday, I couldn't weasel my way through it. Mass was about to start. Boo.

I do plan to return to Metz just because of this cathedral. It harbors one of the highest naves in the world, as far as cathedrals/basilicas go, AND it also contains more ancient stained glass than any other building in the world.

There's a reason it's nicknamed "The Lantern of God"

Our final stop on our 2 hour tour of Metz was Porte Des Allemands. In English it literally translates to "Door of Germany".

I had to see it because I live in Germany and I love France!

This fortified medieval gate was built to control access in and out of Saarland, Germany from Metz. Construction began in 1230, and over time, it was added to up until the 15th century. At some point, there was a museum in one of the towers (after Metz officially occupied the gate) that is said to have housed Roman artifacts and engravings, dating from back when Romans ruled this region. There are supposedly modern things (18th, 19th century), too, such as medals, coins, and really old furniture.

Today, there is not any access or tours to the public of any inner part of the towers. No museum tours will be found on any websites, sorry.

Porte Des Allemands is now just a neato place to roam about.

The weather was warming up and we decided to hit the road. We had a four hour drive to home from Metz, and wanted to hop on the autobahn before it got insanely hot (Europe is having a crazy heatwave this year. Breaking high temperatures all over the place!). We walked back to the car from which we came, but I took my sweet time doing so.