Lille Deux

Saturday 11th September 

I'm in catch up mode with the blog and am actually sitting in a hotel room in sunny Germany as I write. It is now Wednesday 15th.

Where were we? Oh yes, way back on Saturday we were in Lille. An unexpectly lovely medieval town. Lots of winding cobblestone streets, tall higgledy-piggledy buildings with crazy rennovations,weird roof lines and manically leaning chimney pots. I doubt that anyone applies for buidling permits here. Our hotel room was on the 4th floor, so we had a fascinating view of the Lille roofscape.

Rooftops in LIlle (view from 4th floor window at Hotel Up)

Lille Fact File:

• 3 million residents in Lille and surrounding suburbs
• Most of them seem to be shopping on Saturday!
• There are the "usual" shops that you would find in any international shopping mall so nothing remarkable there, but there are specialities de Lilliose; 

Boulangeries (fabulous bread), Patisseries (wicked cakes)

There are more chocolate shops than I ever have seen in one town. The oldest of these is Meert (established in 1762).

Historically, Meert is famous for supplying cakes and chocolates to French nobility, more recently opinion is divided. Are they still fabulous or are they trading on past (justifiable) glories? Reviews on the web show that the French love Meert while international tourists are inclined to give them a panning, mostly because of price (yes, they are expensive) and because they don't speak English in the shop (D'oh this is France!). But we managed to buy some chocolates and the staff coped with our point and grunt French quite cheefully. The confections are highest quality and are superbly presented so I say the French are right. As for price, yes they are not cheap, but this is a hand made artisanal product and you get what you pay for. I bought some dark chocolate dipped glace orange slices. They are absoultely gorgeous (particularly with a good cup of coffee) but are so rich that they are not the sort of chocolates where you can scoff a whole box in one sitting. And that's how I like chocolates and cake, thick, rich and very rarely!

Somewhat surprisingly, there are many second hand and antiquarian bookshops in Lille. However, this is a University town, in fact it seemed to be the start of the academic year. There were groups of bewildered first years being hazed all over town by their more mature colleagues(ie 2nd years.)Nothing changes, come ca?

Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille (the main square -in the video below is now named Place de La General de Gaulle)

 

Place de General de Gaulle (town centre)

As you might expect, there are many, many cafes in Lille where the Lilloise sit out at small tables in the sun; drinking and smoking (my God I wanted a Gauloise!).Bier is a popular drink, especially Leffre Ruby (red fruit based beer). No one seems to eat until after 7.00pm (except of course, le tourists.) Many of the cafes in the main squares offer regional menus, but most of them are designed for for visitors - the carbonade I had had certainly seen better days. But there is good, interesting food to be had in Lille. We had lunch (with locals) at Les Charlottes Enville, a restaurant that had a potato and salad based menu. Bon!