Last month, on August 16th, Bert and I drove to Lille (seeing the trains weren't running due to engeneering works) to see some bits of Lille 3000, the three-annual art event held in the town.
This one was themed Eldorado, and there was a list as long as my arm of things to do in greater Lille (not just Lille, but also the surrounding towns).
The expo I had really wanted to see, Curiosidad at the Natural History Museum, had sadly already ended, so I settled for Golden Rooms at the Palais Beaux Arts. When we drove into the city to get to the parking, however, I saw some amazing creature statues out in the street, so we decided to go look for those too, at some point during the day.
Considering we arrived around lunch time, the first thing to do was to find food. Bert initially wanted to grab something at the supermarket, but the only supermarket smack on the main square is a tiny Casino (yup, there's a supermarket chain in France called Casino) and they didn't have anything either of us wanted. So we decided to venture to either Paul or Pain Quotidien, but we noticed a Pomme de Pain much nearer to where we were, so we went and had a look and ended up eating there.
Which was a good choice, because it was very quiet, the staff was friendly, the toilet clean (it's a small place so they have one genderneutral disability friendly loo, something you often see in France) and they had this big book case where you could either take a book, leave a book, or both, free of charge! I approve of such things!
First thing we had to do after lunch was walk to the tourism office, because I wanted to see if there was a map listing all Eldorado sites. I also grabbed a newer version of my city map, because mine was a few years old and the new ones have a better walking route listed on them to the museums.
Sadly there were no Eldorado maps left, so a kind employee gave me two sets of all the other documentation they had. One for me and one for Line, my painting teacher (although this year we have two teachers, which I didn't know, else I had brought some for our Saturday teacher Dorien,too!).
Armed with a map we set off to the PBA. Without taking the scenic route like we did when we walked to the Natural History Museum a few years ago :).
I really enjoyed PBA. It's not that big, but you can still comfortably spend a few hours in there. They've got some pieces by famous painters such as Picasso and Goya, but they also have a Frans Floris De Vriendt (of The Fall of Rebel Angels fame, which is in the Antwerp Cathedral at the moment, it used to be in the KMSKA in Antwerp, the Fine Arts museum that has been closed for over a decade and I doubt will ever reopen, which makes me hella sad) and a piece that is basically pop surrealism avant la lettre. Meaning I felt immediately justified in pretty much painting pop surrealism portraits myself most of the time :D.
I really vibed the walls being in this ridiculous shade of pink in some areas!
Yeah, the ceiling is this cool pixelated clouded sky art piece.
See, pop surrealism avant-la-lettre, because this was painted in the 1500s.
My outfit of the day.
Golden Rooms and Golden Books were the expos that were part of Eldorado, and I quite liked how they were set up, in the middle of the rest of the collection in a selection of rooms.
To be honest I liked the set-up of the expo more than the actual expos.
Which weren't that special, but the rest of the museum was really neat so I enjoyed my visit. As did Bert.
He did object to the museum café because he felt it looked really dull and unwelcoming. I also didn't buy anything at the gift shop, because there was nothing I liked, or stuff was just so overpriced I couldn't justify overpaying that much.
It's about a 15 minute walk from PBA to the center of Lille, and about 25 to the big mall. And luckily, the street leading up from the center to the mall was lined with the Métamorphoses, the statues I wanted to see. So I took a ton of photos.
I liked this dog best. Bert and I think it looks like a fox, but the name card read chien (dog) so there you go.
We also had a look at Maisons du Monde, where we didn't buy anything but couldn't resist a silly mirror selfie.
I did want to go to the mall, because I wanted to look for cardigans at Primark (I didn't find any I wanted), look at geek stuff (didn't buy any) and I was still on the hunt for the inks and brush dryer I had seen in the Flying Tiger Copenhagen flyer (no matter how many Tigers I looked in, I didn't find either anywhere!) and buy some stuff I was running low on at Sephora. That last one I did do, and I also bought a Too Faced lipstick, which I didn't need but I really wanted it, and I've used it loads already, so I feel that it wasn't that bad.
We also picked up food for ourselves and candy for my dad (who is still addicted to Haribo's Croco Pik!) at the Carrefour before wandering back to the center.
On the way I took a bunch more photos, with my analog camera this time. Having already gone to Sephora in the mall, I didn't go to the one in the center, but I did pop into Furet du Nord to grab a sudoku for my dad. And into the place where Charlotte and I got macarons from on another visit, to buy some coffee macarons for myself. We did consider Starbucks, but they weren't serving Cool Sunrise, and I didn't feel like anything else, and Bert never feels like Starbucks to start with, so we decided to call it a day and drie home. Because you know, its a two hour drive and it was late afternoon already.
But we'll definitely go back to Lille another time, probably next time there's a good exhibition on somewhere :).
In the meantime, here are all my Lille photos :).
And some scrap pages I did in my sketchbook about my visit.
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