an american in belgië : Liege aka Luik

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we took a drive down to Liege. It's only maybe a half hour away, but we've just never gone there. It is called Liege in French and Luik in Dutch. Our street, Luikersteenweg, supposedly goes to Luik (Liege). It does go in that direction, but I don't think you'd end up in Liege/Luik if you take Luikersteenweg to its end.

And BTW, steen is "stone" and weg is "road".

Liege is actually a pretty nice city and much bigger than I anticipated with a population close to 200,000. It lies on the Meuse River.

There were a lot of people shopping and a lot of places to shop.

Naturally, it goes without saying there is at least one beautiful church. This is St. Vincent's, an art deco built in 1930.

This one is the Liege Cathedral (aka St. Paul's Cathedral). It's actually quite new since it replaced the original St. Lambert's Cathedral founded in the 10th century and off and on systematically destroyed thereafter and entirely leveled in 1827.

It was as beautiful as any cathedrals we've seen, but apparently there is another cathedral in Liege we never saw that is touted as even more spectacular. These next two pictures that I found on the internet are impressive.

Maybe on our next trip we will find it.

The first references to Liege date back to 558. Fast forward, if you will, through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to WWI and WWII. In 1914, the Germans took the city in less than two weeks and then again in 1940 the Germans returned taking the city in only three days.

This is the train station designed by famous architect, Santiago Calatrava.

Another popular landmark in Liege are these stairs.

There is legend that soldiers climbed the hill of Montagne de Bueren in 1468 to take Charles the Bold , but it was actually only built in 1880 to allow soldiers on top of the hill to go down to the center without having to pass through dangerous little alleys.