Cheap Travel Today

La Vieille Bourse, Lille Planning a day trip from London? 90 minutes from the capital by train can take you to some interesting cities: Bristol, Southampton, Winchester, Canterbury, Stratford are just a few options. Until recently however, you would not have considered a French destination. All this changed with the introduction of the high speed line that takes the Eurostar from London St Pancras to a long black hole under the Channel in less than 40 minutes. Lille is now perfectly accessible as the first major French city on the Brussels line, and is reached around 30 minutes after emerging on French soil. La Grand Place, Lille Lille is the centre of an industrial region and does not rank highly among the French tourist hotspots. While it may lack the surrounding beauty and interest of southern France, the city of Lille itself has enough to keep a visitor entertained for a day and probably a weekend. Its a laid back city, and having been three times and arrived eac...

Disturbing wolf, Lille Zoo Imagine coming face to face with this creature? I was calmly munching on my baguette when I turned round and caught sight of this monster lurking in the bushes. Well, I was so shocked I almost dropped my delicious snack. When youre in France for a day trip you should be prepared for almost anything. But this? Welcome to the eerie, slightly unnerving and utterly splendid cardboard zoo of Lille. Le Parc Zoologique de Lille is a very impressive municipal zoo and easily reached by a 15 minute walk from the citys main square. It does have some real animals too; in fact Ive paid to enter zoos that are considerably smaller. The red pandas at the entrance are a crowd pleaser, and the American and African sections provide a selection of alpacas, llamas, rhino, zebras and gazelle-shaped creatures (not all mixed together obviously). Levitating lynx But its the cardboard animals that caught our imagination. They are scattered around the park, sometimes occ...