A guide to Lille

And a few sketches

We arrived in Lille on the Eurostar, making it our first stop with our Interrail tickets. I hadn’t been to Lille before, but I chose it because it’s such an easy journey from London—perfect for starting our trip in France. Coming from Yorkshire, it only took a couple of trains to get here, so it felt like a simple and relaxed way to kick things off.

Lille is a really lovely, small city, it’s easily walkable, even with kids. It’s perfect for just pottering around, admiring the Flemish architecture, and stopping for pastries and waffles along the way. I could’ve happily spent hours sketching buildings and the lovely squares, but with a three-year-old in tow, I mostly managed a few quick fuzzy photos and a handful of very fast scribbled drawings.

On our first day, we wandered through the old town, and when the rain rolled in, we ducked into the Palais des Beaux-Arts. It was an enjoyable gallery, I would say there wasn’t much for children but it had these amazing optical illusions shown in the images below. There were a couple of other art galleries I’d hoped to visit - La piscine looked interesting, but we didn’t manage a trip and also laM looked like a brilliant sculpture park but it’s currently closed, i fancy a trip back to see this!

We had a lovely second day visiting the citadel park in central Lille, it was brilliant for the kids and we all enjoyed the little zoo that seemed really reasonably priced for such a well considered zoo. There was a nice play park with an area for picnics and amazing flowers too.

My personal highlight in Lille was simply all the cobblestone streets and little shops and cafes, Meert was a gorgeous chocolate shop and patisserie that had a lovely building inside and out. The old stock exchange building also had a book market that was good for a browse and I stumbled on a few well stocked art shops too.

We stayed close to the station as we needed to hop on a train early in the morning but we enjoyed being beside a little local park and stumbled apon a small urban farm where we spent a lovely evening, they had outdoor games and a great kitchen garden.

I imagine we will return to Lille, the ease of getting there and the size of the city suited us perfectly.