We have been trying to visit Lille in northern France for several trips. Each time it has been on the agenda we have skipped it for one reason or another. So we were determined to stop this time. We found a campground on the edge of the city and as we drove Ton did a good deal of research on things to do in Lille, we were looking forward to the day. We arrived at the campground around 11:20 which should have been well before the French 2 to 3 hour lunch break. The campground looked nice and we could see plenty of places to park, but the office was closed. There was a sign to ring the doorbell which I did, but no response. There was another sign to call a phone number if no one answered the door bell. I did that and no one answered the call. I finally texted the phone number and did a quick search of the campground trying to find someone to no avail. So once again Lille remains unvisited.
We have decided to follow the Atlantic coast of France as we head down towards Spain, and the next stop we had planned after Lille was in Amiens. It wasn’t too much farther to Amiens so we decided to push on. As we drove Ton did some quick research on what to do so we could hit the ground running. The area between Lille and Amiens was the site of some of the most bloody battles of WWI. The British and Commonwealth troops were responsible for this area. The roads we were driving were lined with massive graveyards of British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and Chinese soldiers. After a while Ton said the road reminded her of the trail of tears in the US and she began calling it the British trail of tears.
As we were driving Ton announced that the Amiens Cathedral was the biggest Gothic Cathedral in France by volume. I said that is a weird way to measure the size of a building, but she said nevertheless it is twice as big as Notre Dame in Paris by volume, with over 400,000 cubic feet of interior space. When we arrived I had to concede that it did indeed have a lot of volume to it.
The interior is massive and the ceilings are impressively high. It is quite a building and it luckily was largely untouched when Amiens was fought over in both world wars.
Amiens is split by the Somme River and it has a nice neighborhood of old homes that survived the wars mixed with newer homes built after WWII to replace homes that were destroyed.
We spent a few hours wandering through the city and enjoying the perfect weather. But after a while we both realized that in our rush to get to town we had missed lunch and were famished. In France there is a period between 2pm and 6:30 pm when almost all restaurants are closed. Particularly in cities that don’t cater to tourists. Amiens is definitely one of those cities as we did not hear one non-French voice in our entire time walking the streets. So we decided to head back to François for the night and get some food.