Day trip to Liège
Description
The trip to Liège takes us through the Dutch and Belgian Limburg countryside where we have coffee at the extraordinary Kruisheren Hotel.
The first reason for our day trip, however, is the near completion of the new High Speed Line Station Guillemins in Liege, designed by architect Santiago de Calatrava. It connects Brussels to Cologne by TGV. After an international competition, the project was awarded to renowned Spanish architect Calatrava. He was chosen for his international appeal, but also for his experience with stations. Thus, he previously designed the Stadelhofen station in Zurich, the Lyon - Saint - Exupéry (HST) station and Oriënte station in Lisbon. The site of the "Guillemins" project is www.euro-liege-tgv.be.
The new station was inaugurated in mid-2007 and the old station has already been demolished. The official opening of the new station is scheduled towards the end of 2008. However, on our tour of Liege, we will visit the station as a "customer" and marvel at its grandeur, vaulting and exceptional construction.
Calatrava designed three spectacular so-called pylon bridges over the main canal in the Haarlemmermeer in the Netherlands.
See the site: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calatrava-bruggen_(Hoofdvaart_Haarlemmermeer).
In a circular tour, we further get to know the dark and bright sides of Liege. We see the traces of the mid-20th-century mining and steel industry centre that brought prosperity to Wallonia. It also shows the economic problems, which later in the century resulted from the decline in the importance of mining and steel industries, they did not miss their effect on Liège and its surroundings. The city currently has over 188,000 inhabitants and the conurbation around 600,000.
Liège likes to advertise itself as the 'Gateway to the Ardennes'. Travellers often took that title literally, driving at full speed across the Meuse to the green forests and beyond with their windows closed. The city has a bad name due to financial mismanagement. Result: a gigantic construction site that dominated the centre for years and became a symbol of the economic malaise. Socialist front man André Cools was murdered here, corruption reeked here, the illegal arms trade flourished here. This is also where Georges Simenon, the famous detective-writer, was born. Liege is also known as the 'Palermo on the Meuse'.
Our tour ends at the top of the Citadel ( 372 steps high ) with its magni
Location
Departure from the front of Eindhoven station
Eindhoven
Organiser
Region South
Name and contact details for information
Information at ir Gerard van Vucht, t: (040) 252 84 53. or at drs.ing. Cor van den Bosch, t: 00 32 473 955 987.