Heading into Lille from our hotel

Lovely buildings, hard to believe they had been razed in two wars.

Yes it was cool...

And the date.. a once in a lifetime shot.

The "Old Bourse" overlooks the Grand' Place - built by the Spanish king for his empire in the Spanish Netherlands, it was a centre where Flemish merchants traded their famous high-quality cloth

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Austrians, then in the United Provinces, laid siege to Lille. The "Column of the Goddess", erected in 1842 in the "Grand-Place" (officially named La Place de Général de Gaulle), is a tribute to the city's resistance, led by Mayor François André.

Grand' Place in the centre of Lille - now an attractive pedestrian area overlooked by the “Voix du Nord” building (home of the North's leading newspaper, once the journal of the French Resistance in WW2

From another angle

Leffe Beer.. very nice, and so are these two