20240531 Friday, May 31 2024; Lille’s Palais de Beaux-Arts and Paris Gate
We took the luxury of “sleeping in” until 8am today. Despite having air conditioning and the outside temperature being in the upper 50’s, our room temperature never dropped below 74˚F, which is pretty warm for us. The bed is the right amount of firm and soft but it must have a waterproof undercover that leaves us feeling like we are sweating on it, so it’s almost better just to sleep on top of the Duvet. We couldn’t keep the window open last night because for some reason, they had a concrete cutter running in the train station across the street after 10pm.
The breakfast area was not too crowded, and had a more typical Comfort Inn breakfast which is a continental breakfast featuring all sorts of rolls, toast, croissants and breads with yogurts, cereals, some fruit, juices, coffee, tea, and hot items including sausage links and scrambled eggs. The sausage links were decently tasty- not English bangers. They also had automated coffee machines but unlike in England where they offered flat whites, in France they offer Long Black, which is basically an Americano with an extra shot of espresso. The in room coffee offers Nespresso machines with pods so the French seem to appreciate coffee more than the English.
The front desk hotel staff speak English, although it is clear one girl is much more comfortable with it than the other. Thank goodness because despite a month of Duolingo lessons, we are not ready for French immersion. Ben is probably at a 1 year old’s speaking level, and much beyond “Bonjour, parle vous anglais?” is stretching his skill level. Janet’s years of high school French help her reading but her hearing impairment doesn’t help with carrying on conversations.
Our destination for today was the Lille Palaise de Beaux-Arts, which is about a mile from our hotel. It was raining lightly, so we headed off in our raincoats. Ben had commandeered a plastic laundry bag to protect his camera bag. Lille seems quite walkable, although some of the cobblestone streets and sidewalks require a bit of care. Also, there are a lot of dogs and smokers in France, so we had to watch our step and sometimes switch street sides to avoid walking through clouds of second hand smoke for a long time. It seems like smoking is more prevalent here than back in the US. There is also vaping, but we’re talking old fashioned light ‘em up cigarettes that dangle from fingertips dropping ashes anywhere they like.
When we arrived, just as the museum opened at 10am, there were two huge school groups trying to get in. We were lucky to have been waved up to the front of one group by a chaperone so we could enter ahead of that mob.
The Lille Palaise de Beaux-Arts is a very nice museum that is a good size to be seen in a single day visit. It has 3 levels. The top floor is dedicated to paintings, which are roughly arranged by chronological era so you can progress through the ages simply by walking counterclockwise from one gallery to the next. They had a special exhibit which was included in the normal €7 per person entry fee on Claude Monet’s time spent in nearby Vétheuil. Earlier in his life when he was impoverished, and then a return near the end of his career when he was filthy stinking rich. The Lille museum has its own permanent collection of Monet works, but for this special exhibition, several pieces were on loan from the Paris Musée d’Orsay to complete his works from this era. The special exhibition had great signage with panels in English explaining the chronology of the works and things that were going in in Monet’s life, including the birth of his son, and the death of his wife, and events including the Siberian winter of 1879 when the Seine froze and ice dams combined with a sudden warming spell lead to a huge flood disaster in Vétheuil.
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The museum has sculptures including a Rodin (Grande Ombre- Big Shadow) and a bas relief panel by Donetello of the Feast of Herod.
One of the more interesting statues was “Cupid Stung” by Idrac which won the Gran Prix de Rome 1873.
It depicts Cupid getting stung by a bee and a rose’s thorn in a twist of irony. From a urologist point of view, there is a revealing sculpture of Hermaphrodites, and another of Jesus getting circumcised.
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Ben spent most of his time in the impressionists who were rebels in their day, striving to capture emotion like memories in light rather than through photorealism. But there is plenty of other iconography and artistic expressions to wander through.
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They have a few ancient Egyptian and Greek artifacts, lots of religious artifacts from the dark ages on, and even some contemporary displays, including multimedia panels.
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The museum’s web site had a list of “Must see highlights” which served as a template for our personal scavenger hunt, and as we wandered through the museum we check them all off except for two items that were not currently on display for various reasons.
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As we walked back to the hotel, we made a slight detour to see the Paris Gate, built by Louis XIV to commemorate his victory over the Austrians, and the 104m tall Belfrey of the city hall, which is listed as a world heritage site, but which ironically contains no bells. It does have a viewing platform, but we passed on going up for a view. A down pour opened up as we left the Paris Gate and headed for our hotel.
We detoured through a couple indoor shopping malls in Lille to avoid the rain and found them to be vibrant, filled with high end stores and customers, unlike US malls which seem to be on their way towards extinction. We ultimately ended up at a Burger King in a Weisfield’s mall next to the train station and our hotel where we had a late lunch/early dinner. For some reason, the US Burger King App does not work with Europe’s Burger King outlets.
After drying off and getting naps in at the hotel, we ventured back into the city for a casual dinner and thought we'd check out French/Flemish/Vietnamese Chinese food. There was a small restaurant Le Peking not too far into town so we dropped in and ordered ramen and pho because we weren't too hungry after our late Burger King meal. Neither fit what we would consider authentic Japanese Ramen or Vietnamese Pho to be. The "ramen" had udon noodles and a broth that could have been instant ramen broth with chicken, cilantro and egg in it.
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Ben's "pho" was more like a juicy beef noodle soup which was spicy hot and temperature hot as well with wide rice noodles, and beef that otherwise would have ended up in a wok for beef and broccoli. But both were filling, and palatable. However, when the bill came, the woman who spoke virtually no English shook her head at our credit card, even though there is a big We Accept Visa and Mastercard sticker on their front window. Ben had to schlep out of the restaurant and walk 3 blocks to the nearest ATM to make an emergency cash advance withdrawal since he didn't have a debit card on him (that was in the hotel safe). Fortunately, it wasn't raining, and the streets of Lille aren't too seedy in that part of town right around the main town square. They won't be getting a very good Yelp review.
We have nothing planned for tomorrow so we'll sleep in and relax. There are a few other museums we could check out, but if the weather is bad, we'll probably just hang out at the hotel and watch some French TV while we repack our suitcases for the move to Paris.
