Fleur de Lille

The day after Cassandra left Brussels (and therefore the beginning of the end of my time with fellow interns ) I knew I was going to be feeling a little down. So to cheer myself up, I escaped to France. I spent the day in Lille, a town in northern France on the border with Belgium. If a day in a quiet French town couldn’t cheer me up I was a lost cause.


It was my first time traveling alone and it was a little scary but I wanted to see what it was like and if I could do it. I’m happy to report it was a success. There’s no one big attraction in Lille, it’s more like a bunch of very pretty things in a quaint university town. I got off the Eurostar and took a tram to the tourist office. Then, equipped with a map, I began wondering around, starting with the main square, the Place du Général-de-Gaulle. De Gaulle is the closest thing Lille has to a claim to fame. He was born in the city, and raised in a house by his grandparents. So that would explain the sqaure's name and the justification for the city's main street also bearing his name.

In the square there’s a huge statue called the Goddess which commemorates Lille’s siege by Austrians in 1792. Across from it is what I think it actually the world’s biggest bookstore. It’s called the Furet du Nord. It has eight floors which I think is enough to best Toronto's World's Biggest Book Store. I couldn’t go in because it was Sunday and I was bitterly disappointed.

But I soon got over this disappointment when I managed to stumble into an outdoor old/used book market. Immediately I was sucked in. Old things, especially books, are my kryptonite. Add the books mingled with the morning sunshine streaming through the open roof and I was a goner. They had really impressive stuff: A copy of Great Expectations from 1945 (which I almost bought despite the fact that it was in French); the Phantom of the Opera from the 1960s, and Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the 1950s and other classic novels; posters from old French magazines circa the late 1890s, most of which made fun of the British, Germans or Austrians. But my personal favorite was a map of Europe that, judging from the geography, dates back to the 1890s. I almost bought it, but it was €25 and since it didn’t have a date, I was worried I was getting swindled and it was actually made in 1992. But that didn’t stop me from hiding it in the bottom of the pile and promising myself that if I had time, I’d come back for it (I didn’t).


Next, I walked to Vieux Lille (Old Lille) for lunch. On my way, I passed the Cathédrale Notre Dame de la Treille. It was one of the sights on my list, but when I saw it I wasn’t impressed.

But then I walked in and it was gorgeous. The interior was constructed in the seventeenth century, but the outside wasn’t completed until 1999, which explained why it looked so plain. Inside, a Frenchmen told me that it had to be downgraded from a Basilica to a Cathedral because the town ran out of money before finishing. But it looked gorgeous. And it smelled great. I think I’m the only person I know who actually enjoys the smell of incense burning. In this case, the incense hadn’t been burning for a while, but I could still smell it in the air. It’s the smell of tradition, of ritual. When I smell it, I'm always overcome with reverence. And that’s what the Cathedral smelled of. It was lovely.


Then I had lunch and people-watched while I ate quiche and some gorgeous chocolate cake at a sidewalk café. After a stroll through Vieux Lille, past the Sunday market and old cobblestone streets, I walked down to the Palais des Beaux-Arts, a museum that has the second largest art collection in France, outside the Louvre. There were some beautiful pieces by Rodin, Monet (my new favourite artist) and Goya. It was a nice museum—very airy and spacious—but it felt like they had too many paintings and not enough space to put them all. Pieces were piled up on top of each on the walls and I had no idea which was which.


After that, I journeyed down Porte de Paris, a monument celebrating Louis XIV—but what French statue doesn’t celebrate him? Right down the street was Lille Town Hall and there my eyes feasted on the 104-metre high belfry that, while also being quite an engineering feat, is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

(Porte de Paris)

(Lille City Hall and the famous belfry)

By this time it was around 5:30pm and I was feeling tired. So I trekked back to the train station. On my way I passed the EuraLille, a mall that boasts 120 boutiques and 2900 parking spaces. Needless to say I didn’t drop in.