Vieille Bourse, Lille

Originally uploaded by neilmadhvani.

Despite the weather not being quite as good as we had hoped, we had a great time in Lille. It’s great that now the high-speed rail link (or Phase 1 at least) is in, Lille is only 1hr40m away from Waterloo – and using the Eurostar is so much less hassle than getting to an airport etc!

Lille’s full of great parks, buildings, churches and places to eat – vegetarian food was a little hard to come by, but not too bad overall, even if it was just a cheese sandwich at times! On Monday we took the train to Tournai (only about 20 mins) which is a small city in Belgium. Tournai has some wonderful architecture as well and the Cathedral de Notre Dame is definitely worth a visit – it’s one of the oldest places of religious worship in Belgium.

We couldn’t leave Belgium without grabbing a proper Belgian waffle – and boy was it good! I worked in Belgium for about 6 months and one of the things I really miss (other than the fruit beers) are the waffles, especially of the Liege variety – they’re just incredibly tasty!

The thing that annoys me about France is the fact that most places are closed on Sundays and public holidays. As a result we spent a lot of time walking around and looking at things from the outside, without being able to go in Even the big Euralille shopping mall near the train station was closed, so we couldn’t do much in the way of shopping – d’oh!

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