27Dec07 – We packed up the car and drove to the Channel Tunnel on Thursday morning. We put the car on the train and off to France we were. The whole process was very easy. We had a reservation so you simply checked in via a drive through computer screen and then we got a hangtag with a letter on it. Then we drove to the waiting area which had several resturants, money exchange places and of course – duty free shopping. We ate at a Burger King and then our letter was called. Go to your car and get in line. We simply drove in an orderly fashion to the train and then drove straight on. Each car was 2 stories and held 10 automobiles per train car – 5 on the top and 5 on the bottom. I think there were about 8 – 10 total cars so probably 100 cars. The car was just like the passenger ones except no seats. We were on the top. We could have gotten out of the car and stood beside the car but we stayed in. The whole trip was about 30 minutes. There are about 2 trains per hour and it appears that they just go back and forth. Then the train stopped and we drove off – only now on the other side of the road. On the way over we didn’t have to show our passports.
The Channel Tunnel drops you off in Calias, France and we had reservations at a B&B in Lannoy, France which is east of Lille, France. Getting to the B&B in Lille was an experience. First of all there is a lack of road names in France. You pretty much just have to know which direction you are going in. We ended up getting to Lille no problem but apparently got off on the wrong exit. (Yes we had a Google map.) We then began to drive around the suberbs of Lille desparetly trying to determine which road we were on with not much luck. We got into Lannoy finally and were able to find one road on our map but resorted to calling Mom in the US to google the B&B and get a phone number. I was extremely organized for the trip with the exception of a printout from the B&B. Mom got us the phone number and we called the B&B and got the landlady (Catherine) who spoke minimual English but had enough to say that the place was hidden by a church. Basically we had been driving past it over and over again for the past hour.
So we were at the B&B by about 4:00 local time. We had the Lys suite in the B&B which had a small bedroom for the kids attached to our main room. It was very nice. The house was built in the 1700’s and had been in Catherine’s husband’s family for about 100 years. This was our first experience with a B&B and I am not really sure whether I liked it or not. The personal attention is nice but at the same time she was very nervous about the kids and where Noah was eating his package of potato chips. It was hard to get drinks when you wanted them although we did figure out that we had access to a little refrigerator with drinks in it in one of the common rooms. Here is the web site if you want to take a look. http://www.chateau-de-courcelette.com/uk/home.html
Ken ran down to the local bakery and got us some yummy snacks (think chocolate crossaints and lemon tarts – Ken actually communicated with the bakers by showing the height of the people he was buying for – hence chocolate crossaints for the kids and the lemon tart for me) and we relaxed until about 7:00 when the lady told us the resturants would open up.
So downstairs we went to speak with Catherine about dinner. Unfortunately we would have to drive into Lille for dinner as Lannoy apparently doesn’t have any place open for dinner on Thursday nights. She tryed to send us into Belgium for dinner – apparently that was closer than Lille but we went with Lille.
Ken spent about 20 minutes chatting with Catherine about the directions to Lille and ended up with a map that had absolutely no road names or numbers on it. It was a miriad of round abouts and head towards Paris then go to Lille and head towards the city center. It actually worked. We parked in the parking garage beneath EURALILLE which is a brand new mall. Then we walked into the city. By this time it was late so we went to the first place we could find that served mussels and went in. Ken and I both had mussels and french fries which is the thing in this part of the country and Mary had spaghetti carbonara, Noah had pizza. Getting home was a difficult but much quicker than getting in.
28Dec07 – We had prearranged with Catherine that we would have breakfast at 9:00. We shared the table with an older couple from Strasburg which is currently in France but in broken English we discovered that the lady had lived in the same city her whole life but had been French, German and then French again as the city has been going back and forth for years. We drove back into Lille directly to the Palais des Beaux-Arts which is 2nd only to the Lourvre in terms of the size and quality of the art on display. Supposedly they have artwork by Monet, VanGogh and Renoir but we either didn’t recognize it or didn’t see it. We walked down to Vieux Lille which is the old section of town. The Christmas market was still in full swing so we were able to ride the Ferris Wheel which is located in Les Places and is considered the heart of old Lille. This gave us a great view of the city. Lots of shopping (tons of stores just for children, a stop at the crepe stand – fresh crepes with Nutella and then back to the mall for a little shopping. Believe it or not the mall was awful and we wished that we had spent more time in the shops in the old town.
The weather was pretty chilly and being the lousy parents that we are both of our children have either outgrown their coats or consider the coat that they do own makes them look dorky. So Noah decided that instead of looking dorky he would be cold and Mary was stuck wearing a million sweatshirts. We spent a good part of today searching for coats for both kids but struck out.
We stayed in the city for dinner and drove back to the B&B to find we had been locked out so we had to ring the bell and get them up to get back into the house. Apparently the people who had come in before us had locked up too well.
30Dec07 – Up really early this morning. I think we finally made it to breakfast by 10:30 and hit the road to Ypres which was really only about 1 hour from Lannoy. Crossing into Belgium was very obvious as even though we can’t even begin to read Flemish they began to actually have road numbers and names. I am going to leave it to Ken to write about Ypres and move on to Brugge.
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