Last year L and I decided we’d start taking a yearly trip away. A couple of days to the seaside (last year we went to Portugal) or a city break. The aim is to mix it up each year and hopefully visit lots of new places together over the years.
This year we wanted to keep things easy, really easy. So, we decided to meet at Kings Cross and do this year’s adventure via Eurostar. It’s been ages since I did this and I’d forgotten just how simple it makes travelling. By hopping on a train you have quick access to Paris, Bruges, Lille and many more places.
We thought about going to Amsterdam or Lyon but eventually ended up settling on Lille. We were swayed by the price – £64 return? We couldn’t say no. We even found a beautiful AirB&B to stay in the Old Town.
I’ll be putting together a full post about our Eurostar experience. Today’s post is a quick overview of our trip. I love having these diary-style posts to look back on.
Lille Old Town is so pretty. I really enjoyed staying there because although it had a lovely and relaxed atmosphere there were a good selection of bars, restaurants and the locals were all very friendly. I’m actually going back again over NYE.
I spotted a lot of florists in Lille and quite a few of these seemed to stock these sweet little faces.
Here’s another one.
One more.
The walk from our apartment to the Grand Place (the main square in Lille) was about 15 minutes. We did this most mornings and stopped for breakfast along the way.
Cute mini bagels in a little coffee shop we stopped by. There were lots of tiny cafés dotted around Lille. Every morning they’d serve up fresh croissants, muffins and bagels.
I told you the buildings were cute and then signs are like something out of a Wes Anderson film.
This was one of the bars we stopped off at on our first evening in Lille. We sat outside on a cute cobbled street as we did a little research for dinner. I had to snap this photo inside because it looked so chic. I really want one of those velvet chairs, they look so comfy.
The photo above is outside of Post Arriere. There are lots of bars and restaurants to try out on this street.
Bun’s Bazaar is the first place we went to for dinner and it did not disappoint. I must point out how friendly the staff were. They also went out of their way to ensure my food didn’t have any dairy in.
Our food was so good. I could have easily gone back to this restaurant again during our trip. We shared these tasty chicken strips to start and then had burgers for our mains.
This is another photo from our first evening. Matching as always and drinking personalised cocktails at Quai Des Bananes. I’ll be putting together a full post on the places we loved and I can’t wait to tell you about this cocktail bar. Excellent service and fab cocktails. We went back every evening.
Here’s one of the bagels we had in. It was our first morning and we headed to Be Yourself on the recommendation of the lovely people who owned the apartment we were staying in. There was a good choice of breakfast options including pancakes, fresh fruit, bagels and much more.
We both went for a bagel, as you can see in the photo. I really enjoyed mine and would happily go back there again. There were huge tables inside. I wish I’d taken a photo because they looked like giant picnic benches. Outside they had some smaller tables if you didn’t fancy sharing with others.
Here we are enjoying G&T and beers. We were so content in this spot.The evening sun was shining bright, the gin was good and we relaxed for a couple of hours.
I told you the Old Town was pretty.
Really pretty.
We found the cutest little chocolate shop. Back in 1912 two sisters opened a sweet shop in Le Touquet. The shop became famous because of their blue Persian cats. There are now 4 of these shops around France and we just so happened to stumble upon the one in Lille.
I have many more photos to share but I’ll be putting together some more posts. Keep an eye out for them over the next few weeks. I have a lot of travel content coming your way.