A weekend break filled with Scottish bars, delicious pancakes and lunchtime soups, and some hidden side streets.

I’ve never really liked France.  So when my friend suggested a weekend in Lille I was very prepared to not like it.

I don’t really have any reason to not like France.  I suppose it all came from a holiday many years ago when we crossed the border from beautifully clean and efficient Switzerland into a rather backward looking French countryside with the old “hole in the floor” toilets, rubbish strewn everywhere and absolutely no efficiency – in fact almost everyone was sitting back, drinking wine and not doing any work.

I’m ashamed to say that I reverted into some sort of British Army Major, and started sprouting thoughts such as “who do they think they are, lazing around, not working, you should be working”!  Of course another reason I had a dislike for the French is their love of disruption.  A cleaner was sacked, so the natural course of action is to block the port of Dover, causing chaos in England and ya de ya – oooo I feel a rant coming on, but that’s not what you want.

So we left on a Friday evening after work, sailing with Norfolk from Dover to Dunkirk (the ports weren’t blocked by striking fishermen this time).  2 hours later we rolled out of the ferry and onto French terra firma, Vive la France!

Lille is only an hours drive from the port, and with the sat nav bleeting out her instructions it was fairly easy to navigate to our youth hostel.

Parking at a youth hostel is a rareity, especially in a city, but we were lucky enough that ours had a small car park round the back.

We had pre-booked our hostel through hostels international, making the check-in procedure incredibly swift and without so much as a wiff of brie we were safely unpacked in our rooms.

Being young folk in a city and in need of a good cold beer to distract reward ourselves for actually making use of a weekend we headed off towards the bars of Lille’s “Rue de Solférino” and happily plonked ourselves in the authentic French bar called “The Highlander”.

This was indeed a happy little place.  the bar had more beers on tap than any other bar I have seen and whilst my travel partner picked a rather fruity cherry larger I opted for the rather more manly 1 litre of larger! After scratching my armpits, beating my chest and uttering a few good grunts I slaughtered my large beer, thrusted my manly glass at the waitress and said “Un autre, s’il vous plaît“.

Polite and manly.  I was on a winner here.

Until of course the tiredness kicked in, and I wanted my bed.  France, and Lille in particular, are looking on the up.

Stay tuned for the next part coming soon…..

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