Melissa's Travel Blog

Very Long Blog Entry Round-Up: I arrived in Lille, France, feared for my life when buying a baguette, struggled to find my hotel, wandered around looking at cool old buildings, dropped my map in a citadel, saw the world’s worst cathedral, and tried and failed to interact with someone in French.

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My five-day trip to France began in Lille, the fourth-largest city in France. Lille is situated in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region in the far north, very close to the French-Belgian border.

Map taken from http://www.turkey-visit.com/map/France/Lille-map.asp.
I’m not really sure why St-Etienne is circled, that was nothing to do with me.

As much as I’d love to portray myself An Adventurous Globetrotter in my first ever travel blog post, I must confess that my main motivation in visiting Lille was its proximity to England and Belgium (but mostly its proximity to England, let’s be honest). LIVING THE LIFE OF ADVENTURE. It took about an hour on the Eurostar from London St Pancras.

I must stress that on arriving in France, it is absolutely imperative to stock up on bread immediately. I don’t know what magical ingredient the French put in their bread that hasn’t made it across the Channel, but it is very probably more addictive than heroin. So I headed straight to the nearest Carrefour supermarket, which is located inside the Euralille shopping complex next to the Lille Europe station (imaginative naming all around).

It seems that the French value their bread as highly as I do, as I was greeted at the supermarket entrance by a row of armed military men. Yes. Lille has seven-foot tall men in army gear, wielding the most freaking enormous guns I have ever seen, who are put to the nationally important task of guarding a supermarket. I don’t know if this is a common occurrence across France, but let me tell you, it’s just a tiny little bit off-putting.

Just as I made it past the guards with my life, I had my first interaction with a Lillois man:

“Mademoiselle! Ton sac!” [“Miss! Your bag!”]

Assuming he just wanted to search through my obnoxiously large backpack, or else tell me to leave, I handed my bag over to him, and without another word he produced a red cable tie and tied the two zips of my bag together so it was impossible to open. It probably would have been really cool of him to mention that he was about to do that. Suddenly, a simple trip to the grocers was making me feel like the Lille Public Enemy No. 1, but it was worth it for my haul of a giant baguette and a massive pack of own brand BNs.

After having got lost more times than I care to admit, I managed to locate my hotel (Ibis Budget Lille Centre, Rue de Courtrai, which is actually very close to the station when you know where you’re going). The receptionists were friendly enough, putting up with my hideous Franglais grammar and kindly liberating my backpack from its oppressive cable ties without giving me too many weird looks. On the other hand, the Thought for the Day behind the desk was “A decent chemist is worth more than twenty poets”, which is literally the worst Thought for the Day ever selected by mankind and made me want to take my chances on the streets instead.

My bedroom featured the decadent two-star luxuries of a window, a TV, and some VERY creative mood lighting:

My bedroom in Lille. Note the TV, window (closed), and the mood lighting underneath the wood panelling that continued around three walls.My bedroom in Lille. Note the TV, window (closed), and the mood lighting underneath the wood panelling that continued around three walls.

I chowed down on some bread and then headed out for a wander in the surprisingly sunny streets of Vieux Lille, a land of labyrinthine cobbled streets and a plethora of tiny and fairly-priced independent bistros. I was also struck by how ridiculously beautiful the Lillois are – the world is their fashion show! I wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, but I did see some pretty cool buildings.

Banque de France, Rue Royale. This photo is terrible, but I probably suffered permanent retinal damage for it so I’m posting it anyway.

Towards the town centre is Opéra de Lille, Rue des Bons Enfants. I hung out on the steps of this building for quite a while because there was a lady playing the accordion LIKE A BOSS

Believe it or not, this building opposite the opera house is just a humble post office.

My walk led me towards Place du Général-de-Gaulle/Grand Place, the town square of Lille. Although this square does have some nice architecture, I have to admit that I found it quite under-whelming. A small but busy road runs around the square, there’s nowhere to sit down for free apart from one fountain, and I found it to have an inexplicably grey atmosphere about it, in spite of the beautiful weather. Not a fan. For some reason, the entire square is also off at a five-degree angle – no, seriously, it isn’t just my crappy photography below! However, it does host Le Furet du Nord, France’s largest bookshop, as well as the very lovely Vieille Bourse [Old Stock Exchange] dating from 1653.

A bit of Grand Place, featuring:
1) Colonne de la Déesse [Column of the Goddess] to the left (a memorial to the 1792 siege of Lille by Austrian forces)
2) Various shops
3) The belfry of the beautiful post office, centre-back
4) La Vieille Bourse [The Old Stock Exchange]
5) Photobombing Lillois, left and right foreground

Next up, I headed over to the citadel of Lille, an interesting star-shaped defensive structure at the edge of town constructed from 1667-1670. The citadel now hosts a pleasant park, which was packed with runners and a group of loud young people who had apparently taken a very wrong turn on their fancy-dress pub crawl. There’s also a free zoo if you’re so inclined. The park also includes a few signs on the history of the citadel and the sieges it has faced, some of which are translated into English. I think I’d walk around here a lot if I lived in the area.

In the citadel, I did the worst thing that a person with a terrible sense of direction can ever do in a new city (apart from maybe getting arrested!): I lost my damn map. Although I have the French language skills to ask for directions, I didn’t even know which road my hotel was on, or even how to get to it from any well-known landmarks in town. Besides, I don’t even understand directions in my own native language – they’re just a blur of “bla bla bla left, bla bla right, bla bla bla six blocks, bla bla bla directions”. Thankfully, I somehow managed to retrace my steps and found the map lying conveniently near an exit to the citadel. Note to self: Always take multiple maps!

The last thing I did before dinner was to hunt for the city cathedral, Notre Dame de la Treille. I’m aware that “Notre Dame” just refers to the Virgin Mary, but the name of this cathedral instantly evoked romantic images of *the* Notre Dame and I had very high expectations. It was a fair walk away when I’d already been walking all afternoon, but I’m a sucker for a good cathedral and I had very high hopes. My friends, THIS is what I was faced with.

Notre Dame de la Treille, Place Gilleson

Okay, I appreciate that all people have different tastes and whatnot, but I find it hard to believe that this isn’t the ugliest cathedral façade to grace this fair planet. Rather than inviting you into a beautiful, elegant home of God and/or peaceful reflection, it’s all just grey and concrete and imposing grey concreteness. It was already closed when I got there, so the inside could be the most beautiful thing in the world, but I wouldn’t exactly bet my last Euro on it.

To be fair, though, I later discovered that once you get past the entrance, the sides of the cathedral do have some lovely redeeming features.

It was getting to that time of day where my stomach refuses to let me walk any more without food, so I headed back towards the hotel and to the adjacent Rue de Gand to pick a restaurant, any restaurant. I ended up in La Vielle France on the corner with Rue de Thionville.

I took this photo two mornings later at the risk of looking incredibly weird, so I hope you like it.

I tried the Poulet au Maroilles [chicken in a maroilles cheese sauce], which came with a basket of delicious-as-always bread and some reasonably good chips. Lille is very much a chips-with-everything sort of place. Along with a delicious glass of rose from the Loire valley (chosen because I once had to write an essay about the economy of the Loire, including its wine production statistics – a romantic choice indeed!), I *think* the bill came to about 17 euros (£13.50). The food was grand, and the portions were so generous that I didn’t manage to finish it. Great value for money. As for the service, it was very fast and quite friendly, but as soon as the waitress heard my accent, she immediately switched into English. Although she was probably trying to be helpful, I did really want to practice speaking French, and I felt awkward speaking to her in French when she was speaking to me in English – it’s just a natural knee-jerk thing to respond to your own language with your own language! I will definitely post more on this point later.

All in all, I had an enjoyable and free first day in Lille. I spent a fair bit of time getting lost, losing my map, wandering into side streets that contained a whole lot of nothing, and being disappointed by a cathedral. However, as weird as this might sound to anyone other than myself, I kinda think that moments like this are the whole point of travelling, so no regrets.