Lille

Lille's Grande Place.

Lille is a very different place than anywhere else we've been in France. It's the capital of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region ("the eastern Pennsylvania of France" - Aaron: 8/21 regions, Lisa: 12/21 regions) and it's practically on the Belgian border. Thus, throughout its history, it was constantly fought over between the French and whomever ruled Belgium and the Netherlands (usually the Austrians and Spanish) and it wasn't permanently incorporated into France until 1713. Because of its history, it has a lot of 17th-century Dutch-style buildings with lots of brick and ornamentation in a kind of flamboyant Spanish  Baroque style. It's also a very large city, surprisingly so for a city I had never really heard of before I came to France - its metropolitan area is the fourth-most populous in the country. In fact, as we walked from the train station to the tourist office for our free map, the streets were packed with people, out enjoying a Saturday afternoon stroll through the shopping district. I'm not sure we've seen a city that crowded since our Saturday in Nantes last fall!

Brueghel!

The main reason we wanted to stop off in Lille (other than to be able to say that we've visited the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region) was to see the art museum, which is supposed to be one of the best in France outside of Paris. Plus, we correctly guessed they'd have free baggage storage where we could get some weight of our backs for a few hours. Anyway, the museum lived up to the hype. It's in a huge 19th-century building and it's got a great collection of 15th- and 16th-century Flemish painting (which I suppose one should expect, with it being so close to Belgium). We spent about two hours there, enjoying the free audio guide (it was an iPod!), although I mainly used it to read about the art rather than listen. We didn't have time to see everything, but we did see some of the more distinctive parts of the collection, such as a bunch of 19th-century wax seals. They also have several massive wooden scale models of "the citadels of France," Lille among them It was a series of several hundred models that was first produced under King Louis XIV starting in 1688 and added to up until 1870. It was supposed to be a way to visualize military campaigns around these fortresses as well as plan additions or new fortifications. It was certainly a different kind of art than we'd seen at other museums!

Local décor.

Old Bourse.

After we got kicked out at closing time, 6 pm, we walked back to the central city and saw the Grand Place, the main square of the town surrounded by 16th and 17th century guild halls and the Old Bourse, a stock exchange built in 1652 that has a used book fair in the courtyard every day. We poked through the books then, on the way back to the train station, went into the church of St. Maurice.

St. Maurice Church.

This, too, was unlike anything else we'd seen in France. It was a 15th/16th century Flemish-style "hall church" - one big room without a choir, nave, aisles, etc. like in all the Gothic churches we've seen. Lisa also noted that it seemed to be one of the most "occupied" churches we've seen, with lots of banners and decorations up and a play area for children during services. Afterwards, we got take-out Chinese food from a place right across the street (we don't get much Chinese food in Rennes!) and walked to the TGV train station, which is different from the regional train station we came in at. We ate there and waited for our train. (It was 20 minutes late, but then again, its origin was Perpignan, in the far southwest of France. So 20 minutes late out of a six and a half hour trip is pretty good!)  Our next destination: Brussels.

PS.  This was actually written by Aaron.