Short stay in Liège

Last Saturday I went to Liège for the second time, again to visit my friend who studies there. I was getting a little stressed, and I felt like going some place where I could relax a little.

Last time I came, all I did was chat. There was no time for picture-taking, and in fact, that trip was made with the decision of taking no photos in mind. This time, however, I told my friend that I intended on snapping some photos of Liège as we strolled around the city, so he would know what was up if I stopped randomly in the middle of the street.

Compared to some of the other cities in Belgium, Liège is much less touristy. No water canals like Bruges, saxophone bridge like Dinant (although Liège lies on the Meuse River as Dinant does), and no Grand Place like Brussels. I can’t think of anything Liège is famous for other than its waffles. And once again I missed them.

I ended up taking not as many pictures as I had wanted because I wanted to focus on catching up with my friend, and when I did stop to shoot, they were quick snaps. Here’s what I’ve got.

The Liège Guillemins train station is probably the fanciest station that I’ve seen so far and as my friend says, the coolest looking thing in Liège (and there aren’t many). Pretty impressive welcome for a visitor.

Friend mentioned that if I had come two weeks ago, the parks would have looked beautiful as the colourful leaves were still on the trees. Even a week ago, we would have been able to waddle through seas of crunchy leaves. Now, the trees are almost all bald and all that remains are bits and pieces of leaves for us to step on. I guess it was alright; I had already seen how beautiful autumn was in Louvain-la-Neuve.

The building in the back on the right looks somewhat like a castle pulled from a story and misplaced in a 21st century city. However, it looks strangely fitting here.

Santa Claus is coming to town! You probably can’t really tell from this picture, but this is Santa’s post office in a mall in Liège, as seen from above. The string-like thing that hangs at the top carries letters from children and actually circulates around before being processed by the office. I was quite amused by this little setup!

The curvature of this street reminded me of Regent Street in London, though of course in Liège, it is 100 times less crowded.

I liked this peacock statue that I came across on the way to the river, though the angle from which this photo was taken doesn’t really show it very well, especially when the head of the peacock seems to be covered by a giant tree afro.

There it is, the Meuse River, which had already been visited in Dinant.

Another look at the train station, this time at night right before catching the train. I had about 5 minutes to run to the platform and catch the earlier train but I decided to stop for 20 seconds to take this picture anyway.

I haven’t done much solo adventuring lately, mainly because work is getting a lot busier, and when weekend comes, I’m just so tired. I had intended to get to Antwerp and Ghent during this stay in Belgium, but I’m not sure whether that’s gonna happen. Cologne is coming up, and I’d like to squeeze Maastricht in there sometime. Antwerp and Ghent might have to wait, unless I somehow feel energized enough to do two cities per weekend…

The upcoming weekend is…Bordeaux! I’m going back specially to get my residence permit, costing me some 70 Euros and having to take two days off. Thanks, bureaucracy. Well, I’m always glad to be in Bordeaux, so I’m sure this will be a nice intermission for me!