One Week in France

As of yesterday I have officially been in France for one week! Although, with everything I have been doing, it feels more like a month. And classes haven't even started yet.

Since arriving at my university apartment on Monday, I have mostly been attending orientation meetings, getting acquainted with the neighborhood, setting up my room and starting to get settled in. I am living in an apartment building called Triolo about 10-15 minutes away from the campus. Most of the people living here are international students, but there are a few French students as well.

My room is pretty small but it's just enough room for one person and I get my own bathroom (which is basically the size of an airplane bathroom. My toilet is practically in my shower). I share a kitchen with the other people on my floor, but I have my own little fridge in the kitchen that locks so no one will steal my food.

My room at Triolo.

The building is a bit of a maze, and my room is on the top floor, so I have to go up four flights of stairs each day to get there. So in other words when I get home I will have amazing legs and glutes.

I have tons of storage. I almost wish I had brought more stuff. (Almost.)

Other than getting settled in Triolo, I have been going to meetings at the university, exploring the city a bit more and even meeting some French friends. On Friday night my friend Andrea and I met our French marraine, Valérie. A marraine is a "buddy" that is assigned to international students by the Erasmus network. We met Valérie near her university, l'Université Catholique de Lille, and went to the centre-ville for dinner. We ate savory crêpes, also called galettes, at a small café and then went to an Australian bar called Café Oz for a drink. 

This weekend was also La Braderie, a huge flea market/festival held in Lille each year that draws in about a million visitors. It encompasses the entire centre-ville, and there are hundreds of booths with food, antiques, clothes and more. 

Moroccan pastries at La Braderie. 

A street artist at La Braderie.

We stayed at La Braderie for most of the day on Saturday, but it was much more pleasant in the morning when there were fewer people. By the afternoon the centre-ville was packed and in some places we would get stuck in a stationary mob of people for five minutes or more.

After wandering around the festival for a while we decided we wanted to try the specialty of Lille and of La Braderie, les moules-frites. Moules-frites are mussels served with french fries. During the festival they were being served at almost every restaurant, and it was almost impossible to find an open table anywhere.

People waiting for their moules-frites.

We finally found a spot at a restaurant called Chez Fred and ordered two types of moules-frites: Les moules-frites marinières, which are the traditional moules-frites, and les moules-frites mouloires, which are covered in cheese.

Les moules-frites marinières.

Most of you probably know that I am a very picky eater, and I have never tried mussels before, but I actually found the moules-frites delicious! As long as I didn't look too closely at them of course.

After finishing our moules-frites we walked around the festival a bit more but decided it was too crowded to be comfortable and started to head for the metro station. However, on our way there we were stopped by the delicious aroma of something sweet - belgian waffles (les gauffres). Since Lille is so close to the Belgian border there are many Belgian delicacies here, including a lot of Belgian beer. None of us had tried a real Belgian waffle before so we decided to stop and buy some from a booth to eat on our walk to the metro.

Une gauffre avec nutella.

It was the perfect end to our day at La Braderie.