Pity There's Only One A Year !

Sonata :

Lille was huge fun . We had a marvellous time !

Thanks to judicious consumption of moulles frites and gigantic sandwiches , not to mention the very nice breakfast buffet at our hotel we walked our socks off and were even to be seen on Saturday night bouncing about to a fabulous band outside La Maison De Batterie in the center of town .

On Saturday , the Braderie not beginning till around 3 o 'clock-ish , we went to La Piscine , a beautiful museum in Roubaix which has a lovely collection of 20th century paintings and sculpture housed in a stunning Art Deco swimming pool . Well worth a visit if you can . The Friends of the museum's blog , le file de l'eau http://amisdelapiscine.blogspot.com/ is worth a visit too , even if you don't read French .

But then we got down to business and joined tout Lille in a hunt for something pretty , rare or downright strange in street after street of elbow to elbow people .

We soon learnt that you had to be quick . This was whisked from under our noses while we admired it

And though there was plenty of tat to be had ( or not ! )

there were lots of affordable and pretty treasures to be found , while hours could be spent wandering in and out of side streets admiring picturesque corners , lovely shop windows and buskers ( it took us a while to identify a rendition of "Chiquitita" played by a Peruvian duo on the pan-pipes . I must say , it improved it no end .) And , above all , people-watching .

On Sunday morning we went to Wazemmes , a little further out , and after eating yet more moulles in a workman's cafe ( though I'm going back one day for their cous-cous ) we worked our way back to the center through serious stalls , full of eminently collectible delights .


We finally staggered onto the train and , despite having to stand between Antwerp and Rotterdam , clutching two baguettes , a leatherbound volume of sheet music

two kilos of buttons

and bobbins

I got home ready to do it all over again at the first opportunity .