Matt's Summer in Europe: 06/01/2005

Luxemburg

Luxemburg

Luxemburg is about a fourty five minute train ride from Metz, France. It's a small city, and we were able to see all the main sites in about a few hours walking. There are also several shops that kept us busy. The history of Luxemburg is very interesting. Because of its geographical location between France, Germany, and Belgium, several countries had been in dispute over the control of this region. While conflicts have been occuring for over a thousand years, the most recent country to invade was Germany, in both WWI and WWII. However, Luxemburg has been at peace ever since the end of WWII. Nonetheless, as a result of all this, over the past hundred years one-fourth of Luxemburg's population has moved to the United States.

Brussels, Belgium

Brussels, Belgium

Upscale shopping mall.

Belgium is famous for waffles!

The peepee boy!

The grand palace.

Another angle of of the grand palace.

And another picture of the grand palace.

We stayed at the hotel Montgomery.

Paris, France

Paris, France

I left the day before Vivian came and spent the night in a hotel just outside of central Paris. The next day I woke up and met Vivian at the Charles D'Gaulle airport. We took her luggage on the RER train in order to get to from the airport to central Paris. Because it was too difficult to get a taxi, we took a subway to get closer to our hotel. Finally we took a taxi from the subway station to our hotel. The weather was extremely hot. It is also not very common for hotels in France to have air conditioning. We had to shower frequently to keep cool. But it felt really great to finally see Vivian after over a month. The next few photos highlight some of the things we did that weekend.