Well…we woke up to a lovely sunny day with blue skies and headed down onto the metro, which was about a 20 minute walk, which would take us into the centre. Lille is surprisingly accessible at all stations, with low platforms and train edges. If you’re thinking of getting it, it’s a good idea!
Anyway, we got off at the metro stop at the main train station, Gare de Lille Flanders, only to discover that the lift was undergoing maintenance, and was subsequently closed. This meant that we couldn’t get out of the station. After a guy offered to try to lift the wheelchair up the escalator (I don’t think he realised how heavy it was!), we decided to go onto the next stop and use the lift there. This turned out well actually. As with most French metros we popped out in a random lift in the middle of the street, on the main square, shown on one of the Twitter photos. Because I am a train lover, we walked around the main 2 train stations looking at the architecture and obviously taking photos, this included the tallest building in Lille, which is sad!! We then found a restaurant In the Grande plaza. They even had a portable ramp to help me into the restaurant. Which is good for France!
After lunch, we decided take a walk around Lille and came across the citadel, from what we could understand it was an amazing, huge park with a canal running alongside it, packed full of people and ALL accessible!! We spent a few hours walking around, what seemed like miles then decided to sit on the grass for a chill.
We decided to head back, via getting lost. The metro tickets were confusing, and unluckily for us the train that we caught was part of a random inspection. Our tickets were not valid so we got kicked off! My PAs tried to explain the situation and after a few gestures it was all sorted.
Now we’re back at the hotel with my PAs moaning about achy feet 🙂
Looking forward to tomorrow’s drive to Brussels, stopping at a town called Silly for lunch, which will be fun.