Last weekend, B and I went to Lille (a town about an hour north of Paris on the Belgian border) to celebrate his college friend’s birthday. B went to University in Lille, but since he was doing an apprenticeship program in Paris, he only spent about 1 week every couple of months up there. We went up early on Saturday morning so that we’d have time to sightsee before the party that evening. Lille is about 2 seconds big so you can literally do it in a day. It was supposed to rain all weekend but we got really lucky and had beautiful sunshine (granted it was about 40 degrees but that’s ok) all weekend. We followed the walking tours in our guidebook and went to see all the famous sights. Lille is an absolutely gorgeous old French town with a really interesting history and just won the title of “culture capital” of France.
Later that day, we came across a small, kiddie amusement park. Hundreds of kids on merry-go-rounds, rollercoasters, etc… and then I saw it—a moon bounce! I haven’t been on one of those in ages and B and I looked at each other, grinning. He was like, “Do you want to?” and I said, “I’m DYING to but we can’t! Its for kids… look at all those parents standing around watching their children play—how crazy would we look asking if we can get in there with them?” So we walked off and laughed about how much fun those childhood days in the park were. Suddenly, B grabbed my arm and said, “Lets just go ask… who knows, maybe they’ll let us get on anyway”. I was really skeptical about looking stupid or like some child molester, but I reluctantly agreed to go back and ask. And it turns out anyone can get on the rides! So we bought our ticket and got in, and let me tell you, I haven’t laughed so hard in ages! It was so fun! The funny part was, after we got out, suddenly all the other adults decided that they wanted to go on the moon bounce too—we started a trend!
Afterwards, we went to a bar to meet up with B’s friends for a drink. Then we went to the hotel to hang out for a bit before heading to his friend’s apartment for pre-drinks (yes, they do A LOT of drinking in Lille). It was interesting because his friend’s don’t speak English very well and of course, when the boys reunite, they launch into telling hilarious jokes and stories from their college days—all in French (great practice for me). By 11:30pm I was exhausted and they were just getting ready to go to dinner before the night on the town. So B walked me back to the hotel then went back to meet up with his friends for a boy’s night out—he returned at 3am while the rest of them were out till 7am.
Sunday was more sightseeing after a long, lazy brunch, and we caught the train back to Paris around 5pm. It was an absolutely lovely weekend—just spending time with B, eating good food, drinking tons of beer, hanging out with the boys and getting lost in the streets of a charming little French town.
(random ridiculousness... had the nerve to have hydrolics and blast westside hip hop)
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