Easter Weekend - Pâques

Hello again! Well, it's time for another update. This week was rather boring - mostly with classes taking up my time. As I didn't have class on Friday - I slept in! which was a good thing to do.

Being Easter weekend, or Pâques as the French call it, I had wanted to see if there was anything special going on. Well, in France there is no Easter bunny! Instead, they tell the children that the bells of the churches, which go silent on Good Friday to mourn the death of Christ, fly to Rome and return on Easter Sunday with chocolate eggs! So there is the tradition of giving and receiving chocolate eggs on Easter. It is also tradition to have a huge feast on Easter Sunday after going to mass with the traditional dish being lamb.

Well, the bells didn't bring me any chocolate this year - they must've skipped me as I'm not actually French! Haha! I was going to see about going to a mass here in Lille this morning - however I had no energy to get out of bed this morning and had forgotten to look at church times before I fell asleep last night. So this weekend has been rather relaxing for me, and will continue tomorrow as I don't have classes because it is Easter Monday which is a bank holiday to give people time for traveling - thus no school!

Yesterday, however, I decided to go on a little excursion out to the cities of Tourcoing and Roubaix - without knowing what I was doing, or where I was going but armed with just a few maps which ended up not being very useful! I bought an all day pass for the metro and tram, and took the metro over to the Gare Lille Flandres station which is the station between the two train stations and just a hop from the city centre here in Lille. At that station, I got on the tram for the first time and headed out to Tourcoing Centre. It was an interesting ride, the tram was basically a train above ground with overhead lines that gave it power. It was a bumpy ride though! But was an interesting way to see things above ground on my way out.

Once I got off in Tourcoing Centre, which was the end of that tram's line... I was a bit lost but finally found the main square: Place de la Republique and St. Christopher's Church. The church looked closed though so I wasn't able to get in. However, I followed the signs to the Tourism centre which was easy to find - however when I got there, it was still closed for another 45 min for lunch! So I decided to just walk around the city, ended up doing a few circles around places - in general just trying to find something interesting to do! I ended up in a park called La Place de la Victoire where there was a large and interesting monument to the dead. From there, I kept walking along streets, just seeing what there was when I spotted a metro station! So I headed on down and after looking on the map there, realized there was not much to see in Tourcoing and as I still would've had to wait a half hour for the Tourism office to open to ask them what to do there... I decided to take the metro over to Roubaix!

I first got off at the Grand Place in Roubaix which was a good place to start! It was there that the Hotel de Ville - or the city hall- is located. There was also a huge open area, this of course being the Grand Place! And there also was a very white church called St. Martin's opposite the place from Hotel de Ville. Well, as I wasn't sure where to go, I had seen a sign for the tourist office - so that was where I headed! Only I have come to realize that French direction signs are not easy to follow! I ended up doing a huge circle, though I ended up passing an interesting statue that I got a picture of but have no idea what it's for! I also passed an Industry Museum thingy but it looked closed and I wasn't that interested in such a museum to check it out! Well, as I said, I did a huge circle and ended up back in the Grand Place.

The weather to this point has been fluctuating - sunny at times, drizzling at others and even rained every now and then too. But when I came back into the Grand Place, it was only then that I noticed the direction sign for La Piscine - the main museum I wanted to see thus the reason for my little excursion! Of course, it was right under the sign that said which way the tourist office was! Go me!

So I headed off into that direction and it looked like I was headed towards the train station in Roubaix. But I finally saw a sign for La Piscine and I saw the museum itself! However, there was a huge building on the other side of the street and some random monument that I checked out first - still don't know what they are but according to online the building is a school and I couldn't find any information on the statue. I got pictures though!

So I finally got to La Piscine and of course took many pictures of the museum from the outside and inside as it's a very interesting place. It used to be the municipal swimming pool ergo why it is called La Piscine - aka swimming pool! However, it was converted into a museum years ago and is now a rather well known museum in the area. The inside was really cool as they kept a lot of the old swimming pool intact like the showers and the main pool itself. They decreased the size of the pool and made it level but it was really interesting! They had exhibits of art and stuff in the places where the showers and changing areas used to be! It was a really cool museum. They also had an exhibit there from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris which was all about animals and stuff.

After I saw the museum, it was raining out so I headed over the the train station. After going inside to check a map if there was another interesting places to see, I couldn't find any... so I headed back out and took the metro station there at Gare Jean Lebas to Eurotéléport. There, I was going to catch the other tram back to Lille - however I had some time to wait so I walked around the shopping area there. It was some kind of outdoor outlet area thingy but nothing seemed interesting to look at. Naturally though, when I got back to the tram station, the tram was just pulling out! So I walked around the other side of the station and found a shopping mall! After walking around that, I ended up coming out behind in what seemed like an alley way. Though there was an odd gothic looking building in front of me. So, I walked around it trying to figure out where I was.. and low and behold I was back at Grand Place and the old, grey, gothic looking building was the back of St. Martin's! So I got a bunch of pictures of that church. Naturally the inside was closed so I walked back towards the tram station and after waiting for a couple minutes - it arrived. It was a nice scenic view going back - it followed a long parc for a while which I might go back to sometime if it's a nice day!

Once I got back to the Gare Lille-Flandres station, I headed up to Euralille and did some grocery shopping in Carrefour - the French equivalant to Wal-Mart! Then, I took the metro back to my stop at Cormontagne and came back here. For some reason I was dead tired, so I ended up crashing early around 9 pm!

But that has been my weekend, now it's to the boring part of doing homework. I have two more weeks of classes and then we get two whole weeks off from school! I can't wait for that breek because during the first week, I'm planning to go back to London for a day or two, mainly to buy souvenirs and to see the places I didn't get to see when I was there last. Plus, I hope to take a bunch of pictures to replace the ones that I had lost! I'm also looking at maybe getting out to see Stonehenge if possible!

The second week though will be my fun time as I'm going down to Paris for about 4-5 days. Assuming it all doesn't get too expensive, I'm going to go to Disneyland in Paris, see all the famous sites in Paris, and top it off with the show at the Moulin Rouge!

So, I've got a lot to look forward to here, but first comes the dreaded homework! Hopefully things are going good back home!

Happy Easter!