Episode 14 · Cookie’s First Holiday Abroad

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Lille was our final stop, and a slightly different one to the rest of the trip. This was not really a sightseeing stop, it was our family meeting base, with relatives coming down from both the UK and around France to spend a few days together before we all headed home. I have actually been to Lille a couple of times before, so this was familiar ground rather than somewhere new to discover.

A Quick Word on Lille

Lille sits right up in northern France, close enough to the Belgian border that its old town, Vieux-Lille, wears the influence properly – cobbled streets, red brick facades, and the kind of ornate Flemish architecture you would expect to see in Belgium or the Netherlands more than further south in France. The heart of it is the Grand’Place, officially Place du Général de Gaulle, home to the striking 17th century Vieille Bourse, the old stock exchange, made up of 24 identical little houses wrapped around a central courtyard that now hosts a secondhand book market.

Lille is also the birthplace of Charles de Gaulle, born here in 1890, and the city leans into that history properly, from the square named after him to his childhood home, now open as a small museum.

Coffee, a Vet Visit and Extended Family

We split our few days here fairly evenly, one day in the city centre, one spent by the pool, and one properly celebrating with extended family who had travelled down to meet us. In the city centre we mostly just walked around, stopped for coffee, and took Cookie to his vet appointment, the one we had actually arranged weeks earlier, back when we were planning this whole trip.

The vet was Cabinet Vétérinaire Des Quais, and we had no problems with them at all. The whole visit took about twenty minutes, a tapeworm pill for Cookie, a short wait while he ate it, then paperwork. The practice is accredited to issue the travel documents needed to bring a dog back into England, which was the whole point of the stop.

Wandering the streets of Vieux-Lille

The Flemish influenced architecture of the old town

Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Lille

One more look at Lille

A little snack while delayed at LeShuttle

If you are planning to bring a pet back into the UK yourself, the rules are specific and worth getting right well ahead of time. I have written up everything we did in my free guide – worth a read before you travel rather than after.

Where to Stay in Lille

And that was it. We crossed back over the Channel and came home. We had a delay at Le Shuttle, about two hours, still not entirely sure why, but check-in itself was smooth, and before long we were back on home soil with a very well travelled dog.