Day 31 -- Lyon to Lille

Saturday, 07 October 2023

No more sleeping in -- I have a train to catch. I took a scooter to the Metro station, then the Metro to the train station. Took the train to Lille.

The branding on some of the TGV trains is "inOui". The French word inouï means extraordinary. I like it because the logo has 180-degree rotational symmetry. There was a time that Tob and I were trying to put together a virtual stock fund consisting of stocks of companies that had such logos. Sun Microsystems was one. As was Xpedx, a division of International Paper. Yeah, the stock fund didn't work out so well. Past performance A cool logo is not indicative of future results. 

The inOui logo

When I got to Lille it was lunchtime, so I went to Le Barbier qui Fume (The Smoking Barber), another one of the places with a closed kitchen the last time I tried them. The kitchen was open this time. Yay! But, the Carbonnade Flammande was no longer on their menu. I had the skewered beef. At least that's what I could tell from translating the menu on the fly. I didn't see any words that gave me pause, so I took a chance.

The skewered beef

Lord, it was good. As I write this up, I got to wondering how close my translation guess was, so I found their menu online and ran it through Google Translate.

La Brochette du Boucher à la crème de lard fumé

Viande de bœuf de race bouchère, fumée à froid durant 4h, soigneusement tranchée et piquée en brochette avec alternance de poivrons, pour un goût et un fondant qui ravira les amateurs de viande rouge et de barbecue l’été ! Accompagné d’une crème de lard fumé

The Butcher's Skewer with smoked bacon cream

Beef from beef breed, cold smoked for 4 hours, carefully sliced and skewered alternately of peppers, for a taste and a fondant that will delight lovers of red meat and barbecue in summer! Accompanied by a smoked bacon cream 

Yeah, that explains why it was so good. 😋 

Then I killed some time by walking to, and around, the Rugby Village. This village wasn't a fenced off area, so there was no security check, so I could walk around with my backpack. Then the Metro to the hotel. Before long, it was time for the England v. Samoa match. And that wrapped up the day.

...doug