La Fete du Fromage

My first Sunday in Metz started with a not-so-rude awakening: bells! The churches, cathedrals and even little chapels in this city are pretty bell-happy during the week, ringing - I kid you not - each quarter hour during the waking hours of the day. So far, this hasn't been a problem, though one conversation had to raise its volume considerably during the evening "call in from the fields." This morning, being a Sunday and all, the bells were going crazy!

When I did finally get up, the other assistant living in the studios here and I decided to go see what was going on, and find a way to occupy ourselves for the afternoon. We decided to chance and see if the tourism office was open, which, much to my surprise, it was. I wanted to stop in just to grab a pamphlet about the opera-theater here, but we also found out that a cheese and local products festival was going on all day in a little suburb town just south of Metz. Cheese and local goodies? Heck yes!

We had about an hour to wait before the bus came, so we checked out two historical sites in the meantime:

Eglise St-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, the oldest church in France. The original parts date to 380 CE. That's old.

Eglise St-Pierre. It was originally a multi-purpose kind of place, serving as a congregational space, a sporting hall and was originally part of a Roman thermal bath complex.

Inside St-Pierre. It was converted into a Benedictine chapel in the 7th Century.

La Chapelle des Templiers - a chapel for the Knights Templar during the crusades of the 12th Century.

The inside is completely covered in murals. The walls are mostly decorative patterns, and the ceiling, Bible scenes.