Auf Wiedersehen, Au revoir, Vaarwel

Well, and with that we are sitting in the gate area in Charles de Gaul waiting for our flight back to the states!

Our last couple of days in Europe were pretty chill. Michael's LIGO conference was a success - he managed to corner all of the people he needed to talk to and got a few hiring sniffs. It was also nice to hang out with Scott for a little bit, and we met a bunch of his friends from Northwestern and U Chicago. I made a little bit of progress on my paper (I know what I'm doing on the plane) and also enjoyed walking around a bit more. I noted that there are a lot of churches in Maastricht, and I toured a couple of them on the last day. St Catherine's cathedral was rather impressive, and one gorgeous old cathedral was turned into a bookstore!

One more shot of the river Maas and St Severius' bridge.

St Catherines's Cathedral

The ambiance really went for somber darkness pierced by hundreds of candles. It was quite beautiful.

The outside was fairly imposing, too. It was a nun's monastery, so I guess they were well cloistered.

What's this, yet another church yard?

Nope, a very pretty (and busy) bookstore!

The ceiling wasn't well maintained, but you could see that there used to be (presumably impressive) frescos on the ceiling. Apparently during the heyday of Calvinistic Protestantism, this church was shut down by the state. Much more recently it was privately bought and turned into a bookstore and partially restored; some of the proceeds go to restoration.

It's a little bit bittersweet to be on the last leg - this trip has been excellent, but after three weeks away we're both also ready to back in our own home. I'm excited to see how my plants did under neighborly supervision, and I think Michael is looking forward to being able to better keep his work email inbox a bit more under control (if such a thing is possible). There are still a lot of things I'd like to do in Europe (we did not make it to Germany or Amsterdam this trip...) but that just means there will be future installments on this blog!

Love to all!