So today’s trip was to Lille, called Rijsel in Dutch, or in this case more correctly, in Flemish. Because although technically Lille is not in Belgium—hence the “+” in the title of this post—it’s in Flanders nevertheless. Lille is in French Flanders to be exactly, which used to be a part of the historical County of Flanders. While it has been a part of the Southern Netherlands for a while, it eventually ended up as a part of France in 1659.
However, to some extent, apparently Flemish is still spoken here, although I haven’t seen or heard any proof of that on this trip…
My Off-Peak Unlimited train ticket was of course not valid for the border crossing, but the international add-on was only a couple of euros extra. With a fifteen minute delay—vandals messed up the signalling system—my train arrived in Lille-Flandres, a train station that was way bigger than I expected!
My first stop was of course at a coffee bar, Coffee Makers in this case, for an espresso macchiato and some banana bread.
Since my Museum Pass isn’t valid here, and I hadn’t been in Lille as an adult yet, for as far as I can remember, I just played tourist for a while. Of course, I had to visit the citadel of Lille as well. This fortress was built between 1667 and 1670, designed by Vauban, a French military engineer, apparently considered the greatest engineer of his time. Unfortunately, it’s closed to the public, because it is still in military use: it’s home to the Rapid Reaction Corps-France. From the outside, it doesn’t look like much, but just check out what it looks like from above!
From there I strolled past the future location of BBP Lille. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s a really nice building!
My first actual beer stop was at Beer Square, right next to the quite peculiar Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille: modern in the front, old everywhere else.
Even though it was still quite early, the high ABV beers I consumed necessitated a food stop at Friterie Meunier. Their specialty is all kinds of croquettes, and they were tasty indeed!
The next beery stop was then the hôp[i] microbrewery. I loved their beers, the selection of guest beers, and the art on the walls!
After a short stop at La Ressourcerie, I then went to the highlight of the evening, La Capsule. I could easily have spent the rest of my evening here!
I didn’t want to risk missing my train home though, so I went back to Lille-Flanders train station, only to find my planned train had been cancelled…
There was a train to Mouscron however, and from there, it was a direct train to Brussels!
That’s another adventure in the bag, next up: the Hopz beer festival in Hamont-Achel! (Although I doubt that warrants a blog post, since I won’t see much apart from the beer festival itself. The next post will probably be about Bruges!)
