Our First Christmas Market – a Day Trip to France

A German tradition at Christmastime is to have a Christmas Market in the town square, where local artisans, restaurants, and pubs put up booths to display, cook, and/or serve their wares.  Over time, this tradition has made its way through most of Europe.  The closest such market to us in London is in Lille, France.  Fortunately, Lille is just “across the channel.”  So, we decided to make the journey.  We booked a Coach to pick us up in London, cross the channel, and drive us to Lille.  You can take Eurostar and get there in less than 90 minutes, but it is cost-prohibitive if you don’t book way in advance; we booked 4 days ahead of travel day.

So Friday night arrives and we know we need to turn in early because our Coach is to pick us up at 6:11 a.m.  Then about 7:00 p.m. Friday night we get a call from the tour company to tell us they don’t have enough bookings for a full coach (we assumed everyone is wealthy and took Eurostar) – they asked if it was OK to go in a passenger van instead of a coach.  We thought, “Why not? So long as we get there.”  No problem, but the pickup time now has to be 5:40 a.m.  Our first bus from the flat to get to the pickup point is at 5:06, so all will work out perfectly.  Which it did.  We got to the pickup point at 5:30 a.m. and we were off to France at 5:40.  One more stop at Maidstone on the way to Dover and then to Dover to catch the ferry.  Ferry is a bit of a misnomer – it is indeed a ferry, because it holds cars and trucks and such, but inside it is like a mini-cruise ship.  It has multiple restaurants and bars, two sets of on-board shops (duty free of course), a host of lounges, and a bank.

The crossing is 90 minutes from port to port (Dover to Calais). The departure was beautiful and we sang The White Cliffs of Dover (actually, no singing since we don’t know the lyrics, but we pretended).  The cliffs were beautiful. 

On board, we had coffees and some crisps (potato chips) and we exchanged our money into Euros at the bank.  We roamed about the ship and before we knew it we were in France!  We stopped just after the port at the city of Calais to go to the Pidou Superstore – the BevMo of France, but with unbelievable prices.  We bought a half-case of French Red Wine (which we have since sampled – it is delicious!).  Back into the passenger van to head to Lille.  At this point, we were getting pretty cold through and through as the van had minimal heat other than the body heat from the 14 passengers (which was ok for the first 2 hours, but not so much any more).

Arriving in Lille, we alight at the entrance to the Christmas Market

and we have 4 hours to play.  At the market, we went through all of the booths, bought some gifts and even selected our special Europe Stockings for Christmas at the flat (Debbie’s is in French even, Jon’s has Santas on Skis…).  We partook in one of our favourite things to do in France, eating Crepes while roaming about.  Debbie had her traditional Crepe avec sucre and Jon his Crepe avec chocolat.  They were made, as usual, right in front of us:

And they were delicious!

The Market turned out to be smaller than we anticipated but it was still very cool.  The whole town of Lille was decorated beautifully, complete with Ferris Wheel, giant tree, and a little Christmas Village.

We wandered all over Lille, and stopped for an amazing lunch at a local French restaurant.  Debbie’s Mussels were particularly good:

BEFORE

AFTER

All of the passengers made it back to the van right on time, so we had about 30 minutes to spare in our journey back to the ferry.  So, get this, we went to Belgium! Our third country in one day.  We stopped for only about 20 minutes, but it was long enough to put our feet to the ground in a new country and, of course, to buy Belgian Chocolates.

In the line waiting for the ferry, cold again (argh), we hear the fan belt starting to make that squealing noise that fan belts make when they are about to snap.  It is snowing like crazy and we are unsure whether the van will make it back to London.  Things were looking grim.

Our driver called to two coaches from the same tour company (that were returning from Bruges and Paris and were scheduled for the same ferry we were) – his goal to find out if they had extra room.  Wahoo – they had room for all 14 of us!  So we switched to the Bruges Coach and immediately we knew why they had called the night before to ask if a Passenger Van was ok (note to selves: when asked this question the next time, the answer is “no, that is not alright”).  The Bruges coach was fully heated, had very comfy seats (close to plush but not quite) and television screens and leg room.  We watched half of Avatar  on our return to London.  The Coach is definitely how the other half lives.

The Ferry crossing back in the snow was unreal – weird to see it snowing on what feels like the open sea, it was almost Titanicesque…

Arriving at our bus stop (the originating pickup point) at 11:00 p.m. we were grateful for a wonderful day and that we can be in three countries in the same day – amazing.  We stopped for hot chocolate at the local mart and almost missed our last bus home, but we made it.  It was a great start to the holiday season.

Hoping your holidays are enriching and more importantly, warm,
--Deb and Jon in South London