Je roule

Back in April, I posted a photograph on my other blog of a Washington, D.C. bus running on natural gas, and I was very happy to see that Lille, too, is concerned about the environment and has buses that roulent au gaz naturel.

We said au revoir to Lille after a very brief stay—just three days—and for the time being, I am saying au revoir to photographs of my trip and moving on to some other observations.

Palais des Beaux Arts

It was Napoleon who ordered art treasures to be stripped from the walls of palaces and private galleries throughout his European empire and brought to Lille, where they are now displayed in the Palais des Beaux Arts, which is considered France’s second art museum after the Louvre. The museum houses paintings by Goya, Rubens, Picasso, Lautrec, Monet, and other famous artists. I don’t know what Napoleon would have made of these helium balloons, but I loved them.

Where to eat

Lille has many good restaurants, and I recommend putting this one on your list if you like seafood. The car below advertises not a singles bar as you might think, but a Thai restaurant. Meet People is reputed to be good, but we didn’t eat there, so I can’t say. I can eat in good Thai restaurants in Washington, D.C., and D. & J. can eat in good—probably better—Thai restaurants in London. When in France, it seems to make sense to eat in French restaurants.

City gate: II

This is the Porte de Paris, which stands on the Place Simon Volant, named for the architect of the city gate and unveiled in 1692. It was originally called “la Porte des malades” because it led to the hospital.

The original moat is replaced by an ornamental garden.

City gate: I

La Porte de Gand dates from the 1600s and is one of three remaining city gates to the old walled city of Lille. You approach the along cobblestoned streets that lead through a fashionable dining section of Lille. The gate itself houses a restaurant, la Terrasse des Ramparts.

A walk in the park

This cool, relaxing scene is a good post for Washington, D.C. in August. The past few days, have been very hot with the temperature reaching over 100 F/37 C, and once the humidity has been added in to produce the “heat index” (what it feels like rather than what the thermometer says), the result is 110 F/43 C.

So it’s pleasant to remember strolling along this canal to reach on one side, the Citadelle and the zoo, and on the other (our choice) the Jardin Valuban, where many young people had congregated in groups to chat and practice juggling.

This couple, however, preferred the privacy of a wooded area.

Found art

I don’t know who this chap is, but his picture was all over the place in Lille. I don’t like graffiti, but I do like collections of affiches like these. They seem to me to be quintissentially European. Here are some more.

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Lydéric and Phinaert

Here are the patron giants of Lille, Lydéric and Phinaert, supporting the tower of the Hôtel de Ville. According to legend—and I hope Elisabeth and MLL will put me right if I haven’t got the facts straight—in the year 620, a prince named Salvaert, fleeing an insurrection with his pregnant wife Ermengaert, was ambushed by Phinaert, a bandit lord. Salvaert was killed, but Ermengaert escaped and was taken in by a hermit. She gave birth to a son, Lydéric. When Lydéric was 20, he sought out Phinaert, challenged him to a duel, and defeated him. The King of France gave Phinaert’s lands to Lydéric, who founded the city of Lille.

There is apparently a wonderful view of the city from the tower, but it wasn’t open the day we were there. We had to content ourselves with looking around inside, where we found two more huge effigies of Lydéric and Phinaert in the auditorium.

French Flatiron

This building in Lille reminded me of the Flatiron Building in New York City, famously photographed in 1903 by Alfred Stieglitz.

I wonder if Elisabeth or MLL knows anything about this building. I would love to see one of the apartments (I assume it’s an apartment building). I imagine them as very elegant.

The art of the swimming pool

I have never seen anything like these wonderful petunia pillars before. They are in Roubaix, which is 20-minutes or so away from the center of Lille on the excellent automated métro. Roubaix was an important textile manufacturing town in the 15th to 19th centuries

But the main reason to go there today is to visit La Piscine.

Originally an Art Deco swimming pool, it is now the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie. The old pool is a gallery of 19th and 20th century sculpture. The tiled edge of the pool is still visible behind the statues. The stretch of water in the middle is about three inches deep.

The old shower stalls and changing rooms have been turned into display cases for—among other things—the splendid displays of textiles and related items, and the wings that made up the municipal bath house and once contained bath tubs now house the fine arts collection.

To remind you of this wonderful building’s past, every so often, you hear a couple of minutes of taped shrieking and splashing.

Vive la différence!

I was a teenager when I first started to travel out of England, where I grew up. I didn’t care about traditional souvenirs; one of the coolest things for me was to come home with a tube of toothpaste of an unfamiliar brand that said it was “dentifrice” or a bar of soap that called itself “sapone.” The ultimate in cool was using foreign, and therefore exotic, products.

Now the same stores and the same products are everywhere, and I find it very disappointing. It’s not that anyone makes me shop at Tesco in Prague or eat at McDo (God forbid!) in Paris or buy Colgate toothpaste in Venice; it’s that I don’t want it to be even a possibility.

Sales were going on while my friends and I were in Lille (carefully avoiding Euralille for fear of finding a WalMart), and I’m happy to say that the exotic kicked in for me because the window displays were far more creative and daring than anything you’d be likely to see in the United States. This one was my favorite: At Gatsby’s “chaque homme est unique.”

The architecture of commerce

The exquisite 76m neo-Flemish belfry of the Lille Chambre de Commerce is seen towering above the buildings on this street. The Chambre was designed by Louis Marie Cordonnier and blends well with the style of such nearby buildings as the Vieille Bourse.

Below is the boxy Credit Lyonnaise tower, conceived by the architect Christian de Portzamparc as a block in the sky signalling renewal. It stands near the Gare Lille-Europe and the Euralille Centre.

Two such different buildings, both representing commerce, both built in the 20th century, and both—to me—with their own distinctive appeal.

Someone has to lose

This supporter of Germany was certainly in the minority in Lille.

The staff of the little restaurant where my friends and I ate the night of the World Cup semifinal had hooked up a small television so that they could catch glimpses as they worked. Our waiter kept apologizing for forgetting things, explaining that he was distracted. We certainly didn’t care; we were on holiday and had all the time in the world. Besides, even though none of the three of us cares a bit about soccer, we were caught up in the moment and were rooting for Les Bleus right along with him. When France won, Lille erupted. Until well after 2 PM, people drove round honking horns and yelling.

The German flag continued to flutter from the window for a couple of days after the match—sadly but defiantly, I thought, as I watched it from my hotel room. I’m not good at competitive stuff. I’d like it best if everyone could win.

The writing on the wall (and elsewhere)

Save for the ever-present crottes on the sidewalk, Lille is a clean city. However, I was surprised at the amount of graffiti …

often in seemingly impossible places. This wasn’t the only dome I saw adorned with paint.

How do the perpetrators (it must have taken more than one person) do it? It requires equipment like ropes and ladders to be carried into the building and then onto the roof. It requires daring (or stupidity, depending on your point of view). And it requires time because it’s not the work of a couple of quick squirts of a spray can. How do they get away with it? During the daytime they would be seen. At night they’d need strong lights—more equipment to haul up there.

But most of all, why does the city of Lille allow graffiti to remain, disfiguring beautiful and sometimes historic buildings?