It’s often the little things that make you fall in love with a destination. We asked three Europhiles what it is about Paris, Lille and Brussels that keeps them coming back.
Paris
Margaret Kemp is a freelance journalist and editor at large for bonjourparis.com, where her weekly column, “Gourmet Buzz”, has a dedicated fan base.
Newly single, 15 years ago, I decided to spend a weekend in Paris. Sitting on a bench in the Palais de Chaillot gardens, we looked at each other—it was what the French call a “coup de foudre”. We fell in love; the Canadian with the blue eyes, and me. “Let’s live here,” he suggested a few weeks later. “No way,” I replied. “Six months?” he pleaded. Fifteen years later I’m still here.
Paris, where the Tour de France ends, is a bike-mad city. With the Vélib system on every street corner, it’s easy to rent a bicycle. Living near the huge Bois de Boulogne park, as soon as the weather warms up, I’m off. Stopping for coffee at one of the wooden chalets, I once spotted Jean-Paul Belmondo swigging a Coke. At Chalet des Iles I watch the ferry taking people across the lake to the handsome colonial-style restaurant.
With all the walking, trainers wear out fast—a good excuse to run to Courir on the Champs Elysées. Then make a wish list at Louis Vuitton’s super-store, where the rooftop museum is open on Sunday—unusual for Paris.
When foodie friends are in town we eat in the Bois de Boulogne park, at Le Pré Catelan, where young chef Frédéric Anton has three Michelin stars, and lunch is a steal at €75. I don’t need to spend money to have a good time, though. I’ll walk down to the Seine, cross, say, the Pont d’Alma and marvel at the Eiffel Tower. Then I stride on to my new favourite, the glass and steel Musée du Quai Branly, designed by Jean Nouvel. It was commissioned by Jacques Chirac to showcase France’s collection of artefacts from Asia, the Americas, Africa and Oceania. The French call it “the house that Jacques built”.
Lille
Laurence Phillips is the author of Lille: The Bradt Mini Guide (£6.99), for which he has won the prestigious Guide Book of the Year award from the Guild of Travel Writers.
Whenever I feel the urge to shed a few years and let my hair down, I hop on a train to Lille. Step off the Eurostar, 80 minutes from St Pancras, and the vitality of the surprisingly youthful capital of Flanders greets you like an overactive Labrador puppy. From students in the park by the station to shoppers spilling out of the stores to rollerskating bankers sipping coffee on the move, Lille is always on the cusp of a special occasion. Officially, the reason for this skittish giddiness is the statistic that 40% of the population is under the age of 25. In truth, the secret is that you don’t have to be young to appreciate life.
Tickets for the fab Opéra de Lille, the chocolate-box theatre with its packed programme of Verdi, Purcell and contemporary dance, start at less than a fiver, and even the top-priced seats, around £20-£50, are a fraction of the cost of a night in Covent Garden.
The main square in Lille is a master of reinvention. Spring may bring a student demo, frosty winter mornings a huge Ferris wheel. On summer nights, the place throbs with an amplified pulse: perhaps Gay Pride, a rally of giants or the Bastille Night Ball—always a party.
Take it easy mooching along the cobbled trail of Vieux Lille’s bars, tables and cabarets. There is always a new restaurant to discover, although if I want to be grown-up and laid back I go for the bluesy calm of La Cave aux Fioles.
When it comes to art, I always make time for the Palais des Beaux-Arts and Les Jeunes, a wickedly witty painting by Goya that shows two delightfully self-centred teenage girls reading a note, painted centuries before the age of text messaging, but an unmistakeable snapshot of timeless youth culture.
Brussels
Hettie Judah is editor at large for The Word, a style and ideas magazine with an international perspective that is based in Brussels. She has been living in Belgium’s capital city for two years.
I first visited Brussels on a spring trip from Istanbul three years ago. After the constant stimulation of Turkey, the wide pavements and quiet of the Belgian capital seemed relaxing without being prissy.
Unlike Paris, Belgian streets are a jumble of different architectural styles and colours, brightened up by comic-strip murals painted on walls all over town.
Brussels is a mixed-up place, and that’s the secret of its charm. Forty per cent of the city’s population is made up of expats, and many more of its citizens maintain strong links with cultures from North Africa, Turkey, the Congo, Italy and Greece. There is also something very accepting about the Bruxellois; Belgians are fond of reminding people that there are few cities that can claim to be three times a capital (of Flanders, Belgium and Europe) and yet so signally refuse to take themselves seriously.
When friends come to stay, I like to take them for an evening walk that shows the city’s different personalities. This usually starts with a beer at a street café in the Matongé, the Congolese neighbourhood between Chaussée de Wavre and Place Saint-Boniface. After that we walk through backstreets up towards Porte de Namur, over the big boulevard and into the area around the Royal Palace and museums.
Weather permitting, you will almost always find a street party somewhere in the city; every Friday throughout summer Aperos Urbains camps out on a different street corner and serves early evening drinks, snacks and entertainment. Check out aperos.be for this week’s party. From June through to September there is usually some kind of free music festival in the city centre (most are listed on brusselsinternational.be.) For bored children, there is street theatre every Saturday afternoon, right in the centre of town at the Place de la Monnaie.