The weekend after 14 July, we went to Lille on the first part of our extended Grand Tour. (Later highlights will include Rome and Prague, amongst others.) We had an awesome time. The north of France has a bit of a bad reputation, so I wasn't expecting great things, but Lille is beautiful, friendly, accessible - I'd move there, if it weren't for the fact that I'd die of a heart attack within a week because all of the food is so, so calorie dense. High-calorie meals (beer-soaked bread with toasted cheese on top, surrounded by a cheese, cream and beer sauce, for example) probably made sense when everyone in the region was working in textile mills and the like. Not so much these days...
Knowing my inability to remember things for long, and the likelihood of me actually getting around to writing this blog post any time soon, I actually did make notes at the end of our trip on the things we'd seen and done. Sitting in a cafe near the station, scribbling away in my new notebook, surrounded by beer and smelly cheese. (Marouilles. It should be licenced. It *stinks* and tastes much like it smells, but greasier.) So, we might end up with a slightly more coherent account of our trip than would normally be the case.
We arrived on a sunny afternoon, on the TGV from Paris. Lille is only an hour or so away from Paris by TGV, and a similar distance from Brussels and London. House prices should be much more expensive than they are there - they probably will be, soon. Walking through town, we passed a huge cathedral:
We walked in the sunshine to our hotel - we were staying in a self-contained flat with kitchen and bathroom (Cosy's), which was a brilliant idea. Even though we never actually used the kitchen facilities, it was lovely to have a proper fridge for once, and the option of cooking, if we'd been so inclined. For longer trips, I can see it being a godsend - there's only so much cheese-on-things you can eat... The hotel was a little bit outside the centre of town, towards the castle and the zoo, and it was in a lovely leafy avenue near a university. We will be going back, I'm sure.
Anyway, after settling in to the hotel and making sure everything worked, we went to the Grand Place for beer (when in Lille...) and to the rue de Gand for dinner. The Grand Place in Lille, and the surrounding streets and buildings, is beautiful. (Smells slightly of drains, at least when we went, but beautiful.)
The rue de Gand is a good place to go to if you're in Lille - it's got all sorts of bars and restaurants in it, and it's near a park. It's also near a pub called the Queen's Head. We didn't go in, fearing the worst - but walking towards it from the centre of town, you could be forgiven for thinking you'd somehow walked into an English town centre:
The Queen's Head is on Belgian People road.
There is also a pub opposite the Queen's Head that I don't appear to have photographed, which is called Le Petit Barbu d'Anvers. Which I think translates as The Small Bearded Man from Antwerp. But probably doesn't - amuses me anyway.
We had an apero in a bar opposite the most aptly named gay bar - "Coming Out" - and then wandered up the street to see what the various restaurants had to offer. At the top we turned round and wandered back.
We settled on a restaurant called Au Vieux Louis, about halfway up rue de Gand, which does an incredible panfried duck breast in honey with garlic potatoes (god they were good), steak frites, and an amazing chocolate fondant in vanilla custard. With a melty middle. It was bliss on a plate.
We walked back through the centre of town, as the sun was low in the sky and everything was so pretty. I reckon I could live there.
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