That’s what I thought was the ultimate sort of travel when I was young. And I enjoyed travelling to exotic countries a lot. First, with my friend Liliane, from Egypt to Thailand, and from Mexico to Israel, and later with Roland, my husband who shared my love for travels. You can have a look at a map of the places I have been to here
Anyway, that is all very well, but I find that there are equally beautiful and exciting places an hour away from where I live.
I just took a three day trip to Lille, with my friend Liliane and thoroughly enjoyed it. Lille is exactly an hour away from Paris on the TGV, which gets you from the centre of Paris (Gare du Nord) to the centre of Lille.
This year, the city of Lille got together with the City of Mumbai, which in French is called Bombay and they whipped up together some cultural events. Most of them took place in the week between Christmas and the New Year, but the whole city looked festive and oriental, starting with the train station

Avenue Faidherbe boasted two lines of huge and good-looking elephants.

The event was called Bombaysers de Lille, Bombay is the French name of Mumbay, and baiser, in French means kiss. So it was something like “From Lille, with love”, with a pun on Bombay. Pretty difficult to explain if you don’t understand French.

The girls at the Syndicat d’Initative desk wore sweaters under their lovely saris

and an imposing ape stood in the central yard of Hospice Comtesse, a former hospital transformed into a museum

And finally, what we missed, that you can see thanks to YouTube

Stay tuned for more about Lille on Sunday…

And meanwhile, I’ll try to catch up with my blogreading…