I went to Lille with work a few weeks ago and I took photos.
Lille is a strange little city. It's grey and concrete and a little bit grotty, but nonetheless has a certain charm to it that makes me rather quite like it. I didn't get to see much of it because I was there at a work conference. We stayed int he world's shittest hotel - it smelt of smoke, it was noisy, the temperature control was just bizzare and the sliding door to the bathroom broke so I had to really struggle with pushing it open and closed. The shower was a tray with a curtain and at the end of each shower the floor was sodden with pools of water. When I arrived I found this delightful towel on the bed:
It doesn't make up for the shitty hotel. We went out to a cafe for the breakfast each morning - croissants and coffee - which was alright. The second morning I got some street harassment - it was 7.30 am and a bloke in his 20s/30s starts walking beside me and asking me questions. Fuck off. I thought he was going to follow us into the cafe at one point, but thankfully he didn't.
The conference had some good stuff:
Mmmm delicious French pastries.
Artisan lemonade. They also had pink and yellow stuff. It was tasty.
Being so close to Belgium there was good beer:
And food baked in beer:
This was the sweetest stewed beef I had ever tasted.
We also briefly visited the Christmas market before we left:
It sold tat. Made up gifts that only exist to fill the consumerist clamouring in our capitalist souls. I didn't buy anything.
There was this ferris wheel. If you look closely you can see that the cars are painte dliek Christmas puddings:
I read Raising Steam while I was there. This page reminded me that the romantic relationships I want in fiction are those where the couple has been together several years and are comfortable with each other and still deeply in love, but also have lives outside of the relationship:
Lille is a strange little city. It's grey and concrete and a little bit grotty, but nonetheless has a certain charm to it that makes me rather quite like it. I didn't get to see much of it because I was there at a work conference. We stayed int he world's shittest hotel - it smelt of smoke, it was noisy, the temperature control was just bizzare and the sliding door to the bathroom broke so I had to really struggle with pushing it open and closed. The shower was a tray with a curtain and at the end of each shower the floor was sodden with pools of water. When I arrived I found this delightful towel on the bed:
It doesn't make up for the shitty hotel. We went out to a cafe for the breakfast each morning - croissants and coffee - which was alright. The second morning I got some street harassment - it was 7.30 am and a bloke in his 20s/30s starts walking beside me and asking me questions. Fuck off. I thought he was going to follow us into the cafe at one point, but thankfully he didn't.
The conference had some good stuff:
Mmmm delicious French pastries.
Being so close to Belgium there was good beer:
And food baked in beer:
We also briefly visited the Christmas market before we left:
It sold tat. Made up gifts that only exist to fill the consumerist clamouring in our capitalist souls. I didn't buy anything.
There was this ferris wheel. If you look closely you can see that the cars are painte dliek Christmas puddings:
I read Raising Steam while I was there. This page reminded me that the romantic relationships I want in fiction are those where the couple has been together several years and are comfortable with each other and still deeply in love, but also have lives outside of the relationship:
In summary, if you can visit Lille, do it. Also read Raising Steam.
