Stranger in the north

By Sarah Hartley, Daily Mail

Last updated at 17:00 03 March 2003


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You can see the sights of Lille in a weekend

Enticing a companion to Lille I found was not without its problems.

The idea of a weekend away in a well-trodden glamorous Euro-city is simple.

'But Eurostar goes to Lille,' I explained to my father, 'so it must have something. Cobbledy streets. Designer shops. Pain au chocolate. Museums.'

Perhaps out of sympathy, he succumbed to my despondent pitch and after two hours by Eurostar from London Waterloo we arrived in the north-eastern city of Lille, a stone's throw from Belgium.

One of the immediately appealing aspects of Lille is that it does not feel very French. Once capital of Flanders and now capital of the French north, the Lillois take every opportunity to point out that in spirit, they are Flemish.

Wandering past the ornate Opera House, the restored Vieille Bourse (old stock exchange) where bric-a-brac is traded now, it became clear watching them chatter that the Lillois politesse is genuine and charming.

For although my school French scrubs up well, whether sampling the petits fours at patisserie Maison de Paul on Rue de Paris or ordering beer in a café, the sneer, the frisson of resentment that is often meted out by the French to tourists for free never materialised in Lille.

Even the women seemed unthreatening in their ordinariness. 'Is it me Dad,' I asked, 'but are the women, well, unglamorous?' He nodded. 'Yes,' he said cautiously, 'I think you're right.'

'I could live in Lille,' said my father, as we ordered espressos. And there in the spring sunshine on the central cobbled square of Grand Place, we relaxed, listening to a brass band playing beside the fountains surrounding The Goddess, a statue modelled on the wife of the mayor who was in office when the town resisted an invasion by Austrians in 1792.

You can walk everywhere at a leisurely pace and see all the sights in a weekend, which is just as well for taxis are exorbitant - £14 for a ten-minute trip.

We set off to the cobbled streets north of Grand Place, to Vieux Lille which is well preserved and, one feels, well loved by the people who live there.

My father and I drooled like schoolchildren at the luscious displays in the windows of the charcuterie, boulangerie and chocolatier and wondered, as we always do, how the French remain so svelte.

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