When we were booking our trip to Brussels we thought that we it would be quite nice to visit another city as well so we chose Lille, not far from the Belgium border and also on the Eurostar line.
We arrived by bus, it taking just an hour and a half through the Belgium and French countryside. Our bus took us to the very heart of the Lille's transport system with Eurolille station being only a ten minute walk from our accommodation. Our self-catering hotel room The Calm, was an excellent choice of location and very good value for our NZ dollar. Within minutes of leaving our hotel we were in Lille Centre with its Grand Place, the Lille Cathedral and old Lille, and we spent our three days exploring on foot. We probably did more than a few extra kms than needed as it was very easy to lose your bearings and just when you thought you were near your destination we found we were several streets away in the wrong direction!! Thank goodness for the mapping system on the iPad. It works like a mini GPS and shows you exactly where you are.
Lille is a city of just under 200 000 and dates back many centuries to when it was a fortified town. It was a target in both WW1 and WW 2 and many of their beautiful buildings were destroyed. But just like the Belgiums they wanted their buildings returned to how they looked before the wars and looking at them today it is difficult to such devastation ever took place. We got a very good overview of the whole city by climbing the several hundred stairs of the Town Hall Belfry to their viewing platform.
The Art Gallery, the Palais Beaux-Arts Lille was also worthy of a visit, with many old masters paintings. We spent over two hours browsing the galleries with me trying to use my school French to understand the descriptions. I did better than I thought!
A Bruegel, my favourite.
There are several green areas close to the centre and we took the opportunity to enjoy the spaces. One included the Citadel, and ancient fortication that is still used today by the military. It was lovely to see so many people out enjoying it too - office workers jogging in their lunch hour, dozens of children in Out of School Holiday programmes, as well as lots of families.
The entrance to the Citadel.
We certainly enjoyed our French break, and Lille is certainly a popular tourist destination with such easy access on the Eurostar. There is plenty to see, lots of shopping and plenty of eating establishments and we found the French most accommodating with our limited French. Much more so than in previous visits to Paris and Nice. Maybe it is the close proximity to Belgium.
This shop is called Eden Park, the rugby legend!
Au revoir France as we caught the Eurostar back to the UK.
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