Day 36 -- Lille

Thursday, 12 October 2023

I went to the Lille zoo. It's small, but very nice. It rained off and on while I was there so I suspect some animals were hunkered down in their lodging. But quite a few came out to see me.

Meerkat

It's like the children's books -- How many meerkats are in this picture?

Fennec

White-lipped tamarin

White rhino

Maned wolf

Black-faced ibis

There were several groups of elementary kids at the zoo while I was there, and they were all well-behaved. I enjoyed watching how excited they were to see the animals.

One thing I liked about the zoo is that while you could wander about in any direction, the signage had arrows indicating a path that would get you through the entire thing without missing any exhibits.

After leaving the zoo I walked around the remaining walls of the original citadel.

17th century wall

The Dauphine gate

Then I walked across town to The Bistronome. It's a restaurant right around the corner from where I stayed the first two times in Lille. The first time in town I was still too nervous about not speaking French to go to a sit-down restaurant, and the second time was a weekend. And The Bistronome is closed on weekends. Yeah, kinda strange for a restaurant. They've got a carbonade flamande on the menu that I want to try. I got there at about 4:30 to find that the kitchen was already closed for the afternoon. I guess I should have had the confidence to go there my first time in town. To top it all off, I accidentally deleted my pending activity (about 5 miles walking) from my Garmin while I was trying to figure out how long it would be until the kitchen opened.

I checked to see if any other restaurants featured carbonade flamande. Yep, Le Meunier was only about a fifteen-minute walk away. And no, you don't get an award for guessing the outcome. Yep, their kitchen was also closed. [Google Maps needs a way to indicate that the business is open but that the kitchen is closed.]

Just across the street from Les Meunier is L'Express, and their signage says "Service Non-stop". Yay, their kitchen is open. And they have carbonade flamande. And it was wonderful.

The carbonade flamande at L'Express

Somewhere between The Bistronome and L'Express I noticed that there were wet leaves on the street. Let this be a reminder to you all to be careful when walking, running, or biking on wet leaves. When my mom was young, she had a cousin who slipped on wet leaves while biking, hit his head, and died. Ever since, she has always reminded everyone in her life of the danger of wet leaves every autumn. And if she sees you in person when reminding you, she'll give you homemade cookies. Cookies seem to make the lesson more memorable.

Wet leaves. I may or may not have slipped on some nearby wet leaves about ninety seconds after taking this photo

Palais des Beaux Arts

Having achieved my goal of finding carbonade flamande, I headed back to the hotel and called it a successful day.

...doug