Northern FranceBlogs we like

  1. A Unique Summer Festival in Northern France: Festival of the Giants

    Blog: Video Diary of an American in France - 26 August 2011

    From cheese-rolling competitions in England to La Tomatina festival in Spain, Europe has some eccentric events. Among the most traditional and unusual is the northern French town of Douai’s Festival of the Giants, which is held in mid-July each year. The Festival                  Local people parade the gayants, among which feature Monsieur and Madame Gayant and their [...]

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  2. Walking in Lille

    Blog: Indian Bazaars - 5 July 2011

    Why were we in Lille? It had been an old, neglected town of France until twenty years ago but now it was a booming tourist place. How had that happened? We were here to explore the town, the central market and its many pedestrianised streets, to understand the Urban Heritage strategy that the French town had adopted but also to simply walk the streets and enjoy ourselves.

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  3. Lille Book Market

    Blog: Indian Bazaars - 19 June 2011

    Young and old people walked about quietly through the courtyard and the passages around it, rummaging through old books and secondhand magazines, old photographs, posters and records. For us, it was a different book landscape than we were used to. The graphics were different, the text was different. Here and there in-between was a text that was familiar, an artist’s work that you had read about before or seen earlier.

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  4. Visiting the Canadian War memorial at Vimy Ridge, France

    Blog: Heather on her travels - 1 December 2010

    Visit the trenches and Canadian War memorial at Vimy Ridge, France, where you can take a guided tour through the trenches and tunnels of this First World War battlefield

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  5. The Eiffel Tower – Icon of Paris or tourist trap?

    Blog: Heather on her travels - 13 November 2010

    Here’s the thing about the Eiffel Tower. It’s the icon of Paris and can be seen from miles away. It’s on every tourist’s tick list and is the one place you’ll make a beeline for if you’re a first time visitor to Paris. In general I’m allergic to any place that attracts huge crowds and [...]

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  6. Visiting our Great Uncle’s grave at Arras – thoughts for Armistice Day

    Blog: Heather on her travels - 11 November 2010

    While on holiday in Northern France we visited the grave of my husband’s great uncle, buried close to the trench where he fought and was killed in 1917 at the height of the First World War. Crump Trench British Cemetery is a modest kind of place, tucked down a muddy track with the motorway running [...]

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  7. Lady in Lille

    Blog: A Lady in London - 26 August 2010

    Last week I got two very exciting invitations for press trips to Europe. The first was for the Eurostar Explorer Train, which would take me to one of six cities in either Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, or France. The second was for a business class flight to Berlin on BMI to celebrate the launch of [...]

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  8. La Grenouillere, La Madeleine-sous-Montreuil, France

    Blog: An American in London - 2 August 2010

    Poor Pas de Calais.  Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t question its commonly-held reputation as a pass-through to Paris or as a destination for an alcohol run. Happily, Jon’s rellies invited us to their weekend home in Montreuil-sur-Mer so we could appreciate the charms of a pretty French village located two hours by [...]

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