Olympics – Lille

The next day we took the train north to Lille. This is where most of the basketball tournament was held. They moved to Paris for playoffs/medal games. We had a lot of down time since we booked 3 nights in Lille and were only seeing one basketball game. A nice change of pace from our days in Paris. =)

The town of Lille is beautiful, lots of great architecture and expansive parks. It was busy because of the Olympics, even more so since the US women’s team was playing Germany. From Lille, you can drive to the entire country of Germany within 3 to 8 hours. (You can tell I’m American as I relate it to driving rather than taking a train. See, in America, an 8 hour train ride can take up to 15 hours. Sorry Amtrak, it’s true.)

There was a large setup for games and kids’ activites in the Grand Place, a large town square surrounded by beautiful buildings. They had a basketball court, a rock climbing wall (that was inflatable! genius), and of course football/soccer.

The yellow building to the back left is the La Vielle Bourse, the Old Stock Exchange. It housed the Lille Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It was built in 1653 and served as the stock exchange until 1920’s, when the new building opened and this one was closed. The Théâtre du Nord is the smaller building to the far right, with the clock tower. It was built as a garrison in 1717, later used as a covered market, and renovated to house a theater in 1989. The larger building with the gold top contains shops and offices.

The building above is the new Chamber of Commerce. It is behind the old stock exchange building, just across another town square, the Place du Théâtre.

We saw the women’s basketball team play Germany. The venue was a bit outside Lille but fairly easy from the train and a bit of a walk, like the rest of the venues we visited.

We’ve been following women’s basketball more in the last 3 or 4 years; it’s gotten very strong – both college and professional. It’s changed a bit since we saw the NCAA tournament first round in 2012. This was great to see so many amazing players on the same team. I’m really glad we got to see Diana Turasi play before she retired.

The women were solid the entire game and beat Germany 87-68. There were a lot of German fans there – Lille is pretty close to the Belgian border and not far from Germany. It was a great game to wrap up our Olympic experience.

We had an extra day to relax before our flights out, so we decided to visit Dunkirk. This is where Allie forces evacuated France in WWII, known as Operation Dynamo. Troops were surrounded by Germans for 6 weeks during the Battle of France between May and June of 1940. This began the occupation of France.

The bridge below is Passerelle du Grand Large (that actually means the Grand Large Bridge – very creative). It was built in 2015 and spans a canal leading into Dunkirk and south.

On the way back, we stopped in Fromelles. A mass grave was discovered in 2008 there. 250 Australian and British soldiers who died in WWI are buried in 6 mass graves in the area. There’s been an extensive effort done to identify as many soldiers as they can. They compared DNA samples to those given by families of soldiers who were believed to have gone missing in this region. They have been able to identify 149 of those soldiers. In 2009 and 2010, the Commonwealth War Graves commission excavated remains and buried each soldier in this cememtery with full military honors.

We spent our last night in France near the airport since we had morning flights the next day. We stayed at a Citizen M. These are unique hotels, they have some interesting quirks and eccletic decorations. This is our second time staying in one of these; we stayed at one in DC while I went to a conference. So apparently a standard feature at these hotels is a creepy pillow doll they put in your room. I’ll leave you with this: