Letter From Lille

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

(yes, I am lucky, Vicki.)

We got to Lille, France, yesterday after a 6-hour flight from Montreal, then a ride on the urine-smelling subway of Paris, followed by a ride on the ultra-fast TGV train to our final destination. So...where is Lille? ...it is in northern France just 15 minutes from the Belgian border. We spent the better part of yesterday sleeping off the jetlag - it seems to get worse as we get older - but today we ventured out to visit our host city and we made a quick visit to Gent in Belgium as well.

I would have lots to tell you...but I'm too tired!

We are on our way to Paris tomorrow and plan to stay there all day doing the regular touristy stuff: walking, ooing & aahing, shopping and a late supper at the Eiffel tower.

FL

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Oh yes,

I just love the French: after church, we get wine and cheese here.

FL

[Canuckster1127]

Sounds like a fun trip FL. Thanks for sharing about it with us.

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Sounds like a fun trip FL. Thanks for sharing about it with us.

Well, you're welcome!

(We invited a couple of friends with us on this trip, both are like us: 50-ish, married and French-speaking, This is their first trip to Europe.)

We drove into Paris and parked in a northern suburb. We knew something was wrong the minute we got out of the underground parking garage. The streets were lined with angry-looking men in djellabas and africans who just sat around here and there. Our wives were uneasy but my friend and I are kick-assers so we convinced the ladies to continue walking to the subway station which was our immediate goal. We later realized that this was the neighbourhood that saw the Paris riots in 2006 where police cars were set on fire...

In the subway on the way to central Paris, I remarked to my party that we were the only ones in the car speaking French...everybody else seemed to be speaking Arabic! What a change from the Paris I first knew when I was young and handsome: now, the subway cars are dirty, they are filled with graffiti, they smell of urine and if you didn't know it, you'd think you were in some God-forsaken city like Algiers. Alas, this is the modern Paris.

Well, things did get better as we neared downtown, almost... a bomb scare in a subway station down the line forced our train to slow its course and stop for long periods of time between stations. On the bright side, the closer the train got to downtown Paris, the more the riders were ethnic French. The sleezy people were now replaced by handsome men and elegant women, and our wives were happy about that.

We exited at Champs Elysées metro station and emerged from the underground; Surprise, surprise: we came face to face with a couple of women dressed in long black gowns and wearing niqabs (full-face covering...like a burqa but without the screen for the eyes.) They were with a man and a gaggle of children. I burst out laughing and said in French, "you'd think we were in Saudi Arabia!" One of the Muslim women understood and gave me some sort of shy look.

Paris has gone downhill due to France's unrestricted immigration policy (my opinion) but is still a monumental city in the sense that its buildings are grandiose, its avenues are wide and there is history around every corner. We visited les Invalides where Napoleon's tomb sits on a high pedestal and walked some of the city's beautiful boulevards; We had a lazy supper at a sidewalk café where everybody's food save mine tasted like Pine-Sol (a household cleaner available in Canada & the USA). At the table next to ours was an American family (husband, wife and teenaged boy) who were trying to practice French from a phrasebook for tourists. We didn't offer to help them out and never let on that we spoke English but they seemed intrigued by our French conversation which was filled with the words Pine-Sol and Lestoil (another cleaner.) As soon as we realized their curiosity, my wife suggested we say the words Pine-Sol in every sentence, which we did! They must have thought we were cleaning ladies! So we had a little fun at the expense of our American neighbours. (Apologies to that family.)

We ended our day at the Eiffel Tower but we didn't go up as it was getting late and the ladies didn't want to walk back to the car in the dark; As Governator Schwartzeneggar says, "We'll be back."

Tomorrow we are off to visit the beaches at Dieppe where Allied soldiers (USA & Canada) landed in occupied France dring WWII.

FL

[cslewislover]

Wine and cheese after church? That would be great. See, American churches aren't all commercial or whatever . . . they don't serve wine and cheese. I guess some of them tell you instead that if you just claim enough of Jesus' power you'll make plenty of money to buy your own. Very American.

[Byblos]

Wine and cheese after church? That would be great. See, American churches aren't all commercial or whatever . . . they don't serve wine and cheese. I guess some of them tell you instead that if you just claim enough of Jesus' power you'll make plenty of money to buy your own. Very American.

Hey, we serve wine and little cookies DURING church at ours.

[cslewislover]

Wine and cheese after church? That would be great. See, American churches aren't all commercial or whatever . . . they don't serve wine and cheese. I guess some of them tell you instead that if you just claim enough of Jesus' power you'll make plenty of money to buy your own. Very American.

Hey, we serve wine and little cookies DURING church at ours.

Well, does the Priest pass it around though? That would be awesome. Can you imagine people passing big wine goblets down the pews during service (mass)?

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Wine and cheese after church? That would be great. See, American churches aren't all commercial or whatever . . . they don't serve wine and cheese. I guess some of them tell you instead that if you just claim enough of Jesus' power you'll make plenty of money to buy your own. Very American.

Wine is cheap here, very cheap. My friend paid 17€ ($22US) for a wine that costs $90 back home. Unlike him, I look for the cheaper stuff...like a 2-litre PET bottle for 1.75€. I'm not two sofistikayted.

Hey, we serve wine and little cookies DURING church at ours.

Catholics are great!

FL

PS, cheese is also very cheap. Paradise must be somewhere in France.

[Byblos]

Wine and cheese after church? That would be great. See, American churches aren't all commercial or whatever . . . they don't serve wine and cheese. I guess some of them tell you instead that if you just claim enough of Jesus' power you'll make plenty of money to buy your own. Very American.

Hey, we serve wine and little cookies DURING church at ours.

Well, does the Priest pass it around though? That would be awesome. Can you imagine people passing big wine goblets down the pews during service (mass)?

Actually you're not that far off. We don't pass it around but we do stand in line and take turns sipping at it, yes. Alas, you get to take only one sip (so I gulp ).

[Cross.eyed]

Thanks FL, another proxy vacation I love it!!

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Thanks FL, another proxy vacation I love it!!

Bonjour!

We spent the last two days visiting northern France just east of the city of Dunkerque. My friend, a WWII buff, decided that there were more than enough vestiges of that war to occupy the two days we had alloted to this area. These vestiges are in the form of Nazi blockhouses on the beach, V1 and V2 rocket lauching sites (for the London bombings) numerous museums, memorial stellae, military graveyards...the list is long. So, this is the end of two long and gruesome days. We finished this part of our vacation in style with a visit to this awful place,

http://www.lacoupole-france.com/en

a Nazi missile launching site that never became operational thanks to UK and US round-the-clock bombing one month before it was to be finished. I learned that this site as well as the V1/V2 rockets themselves were all constructed using slave labour from the concentration camps. When the workers no longer performed well, they were just executed.

Tomorrow, we are off to Brussels, Belgium!

FL

[cslewislover]

So . . . anything else?

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

So . . . anything else?

Yes! We went to Brussels, walked along the beaches of Normandy, Paris (again), visited many walled towns, among other things. Stay tuned.

FL