Lille trip - The first day

Our weekend in France was actually spent in a little place by the name of Mouvaux, famous for being:

"...a populated place in Nord-Pas-de-Calais"

Hardly seems worth getting up at 5.00am for, does it? With my usual style, grace and just generally superb directional abilities we just about managed to make it to Dover on time, despite heading off towards Gatwick for a bit. I still blame Google Maps' vagueness for that one.

The super-budget SeaFrance ferry (the channel's answer to EasyJet) was a disappointment, it didn't even have a grand piano in the lounge area - or Point Blank in the arcade room! I seriously have one of the best Point Blank scores ever on an arcade machine that is (was) floating across the Bristol Channel, unless Greenpeace have blown it up yet.

After a thrilling trip across the desolate wastelands of Northern France, littered with fields upon which many German and British troops died (the French had run off), we decided to drive into Lille for some entertainment. Unfortunately, the first time we'd arrived, we didn't actually make it into the centre of Lille (my directional skills again) and stopped somewhere in the suburbs, thinking; 'this doesn't seem very impressive...'.

Still, we found some nice shops and somewhere to eat (more on food later too), before heading on back to our little b&b - Le Jardin d'Alix. A gorgeous little place with only one downside...a very tempermental 'automatic' gate blocking the way in or out - we had some fun with that.


_{It looked a hell of a lot nicer before the rain came down}

That evening we exhausted the thrilling delights that Mouvaux had to offer (a pharmacy, a health food shop, a Church with a classical concert on that Julie completely failed to photograph well despite many, many hours of trying, a few more shops, a traffic light) - so it was a relatively early night for the pair of us...well, we were a fresh couple after all.


_{This is the best photo, would you believe :P}