{"id":13844,"date":"2018-08-01T21:16:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T20:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/?p=13844"},"modified":"2018-08-01T21:16:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T20:16:41","slug":"postcards-lille-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/2018\/08\/postcards-lille-2018","title":{"rendered":"Postcards From Lille 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1089\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year L and I decided we’d start taking a yearly trip away. A couple of days to the seaside (last year we went to Portugal<\/a>)<\/em> or a city break. The aim is to mix it up each year and hopefully visit lots of new places together over the years.<\/p>\n

This year we wanted to keep things easy, really easy. So, we decided to meet at Kings Cross and do this year’s adventure via Eurostar. It’s been\u00a0ages\u00a0<\/em>since I did this and I’d forgotten just how simple it makes travelling. By hopping on a train you have quick access to Paris, Bruges, Lille and many more places.<\/p>\n

We thought about going to Amsterdam or Lyon but eventually ended up settling on Lille. We were swayed by the price – \u00a364 return? We couldn’t say no. We even found a beautiful AirB&B<\/a> to stay in the Old Town.<\/p>\n

I’ll be putting together a full post about our Eurostar experience. Today’s post is a quick overview of our trip. I love having these diary-style posts to look back on.
\n
\n\"Lille<\/a>
\nLille Old Town is so pretty. I really enjoyed staying there because although it had a lovely and relaxed atmosphere there were a good selection of bars, restaurants and the locals were all very friendly. I’m actually going back again over NYE.<\/p>\n

\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

I spotted a lot of\u00a0florists in Lille and quite a few of these seemed to stock these sweet little faces.<\/p>\n

\"Cute<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s another one.<\/p>\n

\"Cute<\/a><\/p>\n

One more.<\/p>\n

\"Lille\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The walk from our apartment to the\u00a0Grand Place\u00a0(the main square in Lille)\u00a0<\/em>was about 15 minutes. We did this most mornings and stopped for breakfast along the way.<\/p>\n

\"lille<\/a><\/p>\n

Cute mini bagels in a little coffee shop we stopped by. There were lots of tiny caf\u00e9s dotted around Lille. Every morning they’d serve up fresh\u00a0croissants, muffins and bagels.<\/p>\n

\"Shop<\/a><\/p>\n

I told you the buildings were cute and then signs are like something out of a Wes Anderson film.<\/p>\n

\"Bar<\/a><\/p>\n

This was one of the bars we stopped off at on our first evening in Lille. We sat outside on a cute cobbled street as we did a little research for dinner. I had to snap this photo inside because it looked so chic. I really want one of those velvet chairs, they look so comfy.
\n\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

The photo above is outside of Post Arriere<\/a>. There are lots of bars and restaurants to try out on this street.<\/p>\n

\"Bun's<\/a><\/p>\n

Bun’s Bazaar<\/a> is the first place we went to for dinner and it did not disappoint. I must point out how friendly the staff were. They also went out of their way to ensure my food didn’t have any dairy in.<\/p>\n

\"Bun's<\/a><\/p>\n

Our food was so good. I could have easily gone back to this restaurant again during our trip. We shared these tasty chicken strips to start and then had burgers for our mains.<\/p>\n

\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

This is another photo from our first evening. Matching as always and drinking personalised<\/em> cocktails at\u00a0Quai Des Bananes<\/a>. I’ll be putting together a full post on the places we loved and I can’t wait to tell you about this cocktail bar. Excellent service and fab cocktails. We went back every evening.<\/p>\n

\"Bagels<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s one of the bagels we had in. It was our first morning and we headed to Be Yourself<\/a>\u00a0on the recommendation of the lovely people who owned the apartment we were staying in. There was a good choice of breakfast options including pancakes, fresh fruit, bagels and much more.<\/p>\n

We both went for a bagel, as you can see in the photo. I really enjoyed mine and would happily go back there again. There were huge tables inside. I wish I’d taken a photo because they looked like giant picnic benches. Outside they had some smaller tables if you didn’t fancy sharing with others.<\/p>\n

\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

Here we are enjoying G&T and beers. We were so content in this spot.The evening sun was shining bright, the gin was good and we relaxed for a couple of hours.<\/p>\n

\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

I told you the Old Town was pretty.<\/p>\n

\"Lille<\/a><\/p>\n

Really pretty.<\/p>\n

\"Au<\/a><\/p>\n

We found the cutest little chocolate shop. Back in 1912 two sisters opened a sweet shop in Le Touquet. The shop became famous because of their blue Persian cats. There are now 4 of these shops around France and we just so happened to stumble upon the one in Lille.<\/p>\n

\"Park<\/a><\/p>\n

I have many more photos to share but I’ll be putting together some more posts. Keep an eye out for them over the next few weeks. I have a lot of travel content coming your way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year L and I decided we’d start taking a yearly trip away. A couple of days to the seaside (last year we went…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13844"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13911,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13844\/revisions\/13911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prettygreentea.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}