Lille Photo Diary

Happy Saturday everyone! As you may have seen from last weekend’s Snapchat spam, I was in Lille for the Bank Holiday. While it wasn’t quite as sunny as I’d hoped, it was a really relaxing break full of good food, good wine and good shopping! Apart from spending an obscene amount of money in Sephora (which you can see more of tomorrow…) Lille is a really pretty place that reminded me a lot of Bruges. The old town is full of cobbled streets, beautiful old buildings and there’s a chocolate shop on every corner.

Rather than fly over there, we decided to go via Eurostar to Lille as it’s probably the easiest way to travel there. We got the train at London St Pancras and an hour and a half later we were in the main station in Lille. It was so simple, so easy and by far one of the most relaxing ways to travel. It was probably helped by the fact my friend is a premier lounge member which meant we had a private seating area, complimentary food and drink and access to pretty much every magazine in the world.

 

Once in Lille our hotel was only a five minute form the train station. In fact we walked everywhere in Lille. I’m not sure how big Lille actually is, but if you head there and stay in the centre then you won’t need to get taxis or buses to see the sights. Everything we saw was in walking distance, although we were doing about 20,000 steps on average each day. But that’s needed to burn off the amount of food we ate!

So what did we see? Well I feel like it’s more a case of what didn’t we see! Our hotel was just behind the Opera House and the Chamber of Commerce and very close to the main square in the city which is filled with cafe’s and shops. We also took a stroll through the old quarter of the city which is where the cobble stone streets and high end designers shops are – perfect for window shopping! We also had a lovely lunch in the square by the modern Cathédrale Notre Dame de la Treille. And then on Sunday (when nothing is open) we took a walk a bit further out to visit la Citadelle which is an old military building that is next door to a huge park and a free zoo.

We went to Lille for four days (Friday to Monday) but you don’t necessarily need to go for that long. Also bear in mind that everything closes on Sundays. There will be some restaurants open but everything else shuts up shop for the day. But saying that, I did find the city to be very pretty and with so many amazing restaurants and cake shops I would love to go back again.

Have you ever been to Lille?