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 :)

www.flickr.com/bexnobes

So hungry I could eat a horse...

I realise that what I have done is something that a lot of people I know will quite possibly never forgive me for, but I decided that not to do it would just be hypocritical really, I'm happy to eat Beef, Pork and maybe this is because we've helpfully given it another name so we don't say I'm eating Cow or Pig but it's just the same difference.  This said I decided to try horse last night.  I was attempting to be adventurous and cultural, or at least this is what I'm telling myself.  The funny thing is that I stood outside looking at the menu and saying "oh horse, no, I couldn't do that" and this gradually evolved into "but I am curious..." and then "I wonder what it tastes like" and finally "well, maybe I'll just try it then".  I'll be honest, it tasted like beef.  There was a hint of something I couldn't quite put my finger on but that could've just been the sauce.  That's enough about my horse eating experience, the reason we'd gone out was to see what was going on on the Grand Place, during the Christmas markets they have light shows and music and things and then on Saturdays they put on these extra shows.  Last night was essentially 2 people in a bubble (Snow globe) dancing whilst some rather freaky looking other people crept around the outside in a manner that I can only say reminded me of something like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Stupidly my camera ran out of battery, which is fine, I'll just pop back another time, but it did allow me to take this photo:

Inititally I was very confused as to why it was necessary to fence in the nativity scene, surely they're not worried that someone is going to kidnap the baby Jesus or something?  But then Jenny pointed out, and I'm not sure how clearly you can see it in this photo, there are real sheep in there, real live sheep.  But I'd like to wish good luck to the shepards as the sheep seem to be about double their size...

It does seem out here that they go all out on Christmas, I suppose my foundation for comparison is Maldon (the lights were switched on last night and I hear it was all of about 2 lightbulbs) (and I hope she doesn't mind, but if you want to read more about the Maldon Christmas lights read it here on Julias blog) but they seem to really go all out for it, can't help but wonder what it could be costing them though!

On an unrelated topic I've decided that the world really must be a lot smaller than we think, I've been looking at flats in  Granada and the landlord for the latest one suggested I might want to contact the people currently living there, so a quick search on Facebook and I'm there.  Well it turns out that there is a guy leaving when I get there, not only is he also from Essex but he goes to uni in Portsmouth with one of my friends from school.  In the summer I met someone in Valencia and we had a mutual friend that she went to college with and I met at Lancaster.  I'm getting used to having random mutual friends with people but I can't help but find it very weird and just makes the world feel like a very small place!

Well this  has been a brillant form of procrastination from the essay that I'm meant to be putting the finishing touches to, the presentation I'm meant to be learning and I'm sure there is more I could be doing.  So that'll be all for now!