Visiting Rheinbach Pt. 3, Lille

Tuesday saw us leaving Germany in the early morning for our drive back across Belgium to Lille, where we'd catch our train home in the late afternoon. The idea was that we'd have most of the afternoon to explore Lille and see what could be seen in six hours or so. This turned out to be quite a lot... So much, in fact, that we could probably spend a week just in the downtown area and still not have seen everything.

Downtown Lille is stunningly beautiful - Just look at the photos here and in the Lille web gallery to get an idea of just how much like a postcard this city can look. Or check out this little video I shot with our camera in the downtown square. In one blow, we are immediately swept back into the familiar beauty, elegance, and frustrating annoyance of France. We arrive hungry for lunch, and of course there are no places to eat. Well, let me rephrase... there are HUNDREDS of sidewalk cafés, but therein is our problem - We only have a few hours of free time to explore, and we don't want to spend that time sitting in a café for a solid three hours, first waiting twenty minutes for the waiter to acknowledge us and then another hour for our food, and at least an extra hour before we finally get our bill. All we want is a convenient fast food spot to nip into for a twenty minute lunch, and there's naught in sight. So far Lille is losing big to Cologne for convenient service, even while it stomps all over Cologne in the "looks and style" department. We couldn't move in Cologne without stumbling over a Pizza Hut - Here, we end up hiking for many blocks until we finally find ONE McDonald's in the downtown square.

Ugh. McDo. Why does the one fast food joint France seems to allow have to be the worst one of the bunch? I could really murder a Wendy's burger. Alas, it's all we have to choose from, so we wolf down our lunch burgers and dive back out into the city proper to see 17,000 works of art and architectural excellence in four hours and thirty minutes.

I quickly found it was virtually impossible to take a bad photograph in Lille - Basically, just point the camera in a random direction and you're bound to get a shot of something pretty. It's quite a different place from the Breton cities I know... Much more colorful, for one. Nantes is like some great grey, brooding stone monolith by comparison. Lille seems deliberately colorful and frilly. Wandering through it feels rather like you've stumbled into some French art film's background set. I keep expecting someone named Danielle to slap someone named Claude in an outdoor café, then storm angrily away as he yells, "Beeetch!" after her and then moodily returns to smoking his Gaulloise.

We didn't get to see nearly as much of Lille as I'd have liked, but that can't be helped. We did manage to find the tourist office, tucked away in the tower building of the Palais Royale, and on a more practical note, we were in awe of the Foret du Nord bookstore. It's a huge, multi-level affair that pretty much sells everything, and even includes one whole floor (gasp!) for English books! We're stunned again, because this isn't the France we know, and I'm beginning to wonder if the rest of France is as disconnected from modernity as we think, or if we just live in the sticks.

Before we know it, it's time to go and we're on the TGV homewards. All in all, one seriously excellent vacation. I think I'm ready to explore a bit more of Europe now.