The penultimate weekend. A visit to Lille.

This weekend brought with it my last weekend away from Brussels before the end of my time here.  This time it was off to Lille, mainly to see the Christmas market.  The first strange thing is getting on the London bound Eurostar and getting off a Lille, it feels wrong!  I've passed through Lille Europe Station 3 times now either London or Brussels bound, it was rather strange actually getting off there and not carrying on to London.

Lesson number one- don't trust Google maps!  It had told us that it would take 20 minutes to walk a 1.2km distance to our hotel, I'm sure it wasn't that far and it couldn't have taken us more than 10 minutes to get there.  When we arrived we find our hotel, which is actually inside a shopping centre, and check in.  The room was ok, a bit rough around the edges you might say, and with the one and only plug socket in the entire room having the TV in it things like phone chargers, hair dryers/straighteners etc weren't exactly easy!

I decided to carry on my "cultural eating" and had snails for my starter on Friday night, I won't be bothering with them again I must say...I also had mussels, quite an adventurous meal for me really!

On Saturday we headed out and had a really nutritious brekkie to set us up for the day-NOT! I had 2 pain au chocolate and a croissant... (it was cheaper to buy 3 I promise).  We spent our morning walking around Lille including a walk round a park where I saw more runners than I have ever seen in my life.  After lunch we went for a quick nosey round the house Charles de Gaulle was born in.  Next stop-Christmas market, first off we went on the ferris wheel, I'm fine with heights usually but I must say this one felt a lot lot higher than I thought it would and we were sharing our "carriage" (for want of a better word..) with a lady who seemed to not realise until we were half way up that she suffered with vertigo...  Once we came off of the wheel we took a stroll through the market, I say a stroll, it was more of a shuffle as there were so many people you could hardly move.  We had mulled wine and what was essentially a hot dog before heading back to the room really rather early to escape the cold.

Sunday morning we headed out, had another nutritious breakfast and then went to explore one of the markets a bit further out of the town.  Then we went to the Lille Natural History Museum which was interesting, even if it did have a few too many stuffed birds for my liking!  Afterwards we headed to the bell tower and paid for the reward of climbing what seemed like a good few hundred stairs at the time, and now my legs feel like a climbed a good few thousand...the view was good though.  In the afternoon we went back to the markets to try and see the things we couldn't see on our previous shuffle and then had a wander round the shops as we had a fair amount of time to use up as our train wasn't until 6.30.  We also went to another museum, the name of which currently escapes me...

And here I am, back in the flat, preparing for my last full week in Brussels!  I'm really not sure where the time has gone to at all but I really can't wait to be back home for Christmas.  Before that though I get to do all the touristy stuff round here for a third time as I have a friend staying for a few days this weekend.  I still haven't seen the Christmas market on Place Saint Catherine, so I really mustn't miss that before I head back home!

11 sleeps until home :)

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