With more than 100 hotels in Lille you're spoilt for choice. Most are central and they range from your standard French b&b up to your five star chains.

I stayed in an aforementioned b&b, named Hotel le Floreal, which is a two minute walk from Gare Lille Flandres in Rue Sainte-Anne. It's a typically French small b&b, with reception on the first floor and rooms on the three floors above that. No points for guessing I was on the top floor, and there's no lift. But the room was en-suite, clean and respectable and at £45 for the night in 2011 you couldn't knock it.

Lille is unbelievably well served for places to eat and drink. The centre is simply packed with hundreds of options – from your French cafe bars, through to higher restaurants and a wealth of options to cater for all tastes, pizza and oriental being the most frequent options (now there's a shocker).

Naming individual places would take all day so let me give you a rundown of certain areas. There's a range of a dozen bar restaurants around Gare Lille Flandres, easy to reach but there are prettier parts of town in which to watch the world go by.  Heading from the station exit, on the left you'll find more eatieries, more of the late night kebab variety.

The Grand Place is terrace cafe central, and you will pay the premium rates to book. If you want a quieter meal or drink somewhere a bit less packed I'd suggest the Rue Aux Peternick area just the other side of Cathedrale Notre Dame, a ten minute stroll from Grand Place.

Whilst you're tripping over bars in the middle of Lille they do naturally fall into the cafe culture variety. If you're looking for a home from home bar, which may well feature some big screen sport, that's a bit harder to find. However,in the name of research, I have done just that and discovered the strip you need to head to.




It's Rue Solferino, and along a busy section of the road is a host of bars that certainly busy up after dark (it's pretty dead in the afternoon although I found a couple doing trade during a lunchtime game). It includes TV sport in Irelandia, and Events, as well as two or three others. They are all on the edge of a small cluster of chinese restaurants so you won't go hungry.

To reach it from Grand Place walk straight down Rue Nationale to Place de Strasbourg, then take the second left down Rue Massena to Rue Solferino, it'll take around 15 minutes. If you want to go via Metro, head to Republique Beaux Arts on the yellow line, exit the station to Rue Gambetta, turn left out of the exit at the top and it's a two minute walk to Rue Solferino.