Every year, I try to visit a new city in France, either before or after my summer job in Paris. This year, I decided to go to Lille for a few days at the beginning of August. I thoroughly enjoyed my time here and wanted to share some of my favorite places to eat and places to go. In this post, I’ll just focus on where to go and in a follow-up post, I tell you where I enjoyed dining.
1. Lille City Pass: My first stop, after checking in to my very nice hotel, the Clarance, was to go to the tourism office on the Place Rohan and buy a 72-hour City Pass. They are also available for 24 and 48 hours. This gave me access to numerous historical sites, as well as the network of trams, trains, buses and the two-line subway system. Not having to pull out my wallet each time I visited a site certainly freed me up to check out places I might not have gone to otherwise.
2. Guided City Tour: At fist, I couldn’t make any sense of Lille’s tangle of street in the historic town center, so the guided City Tour really helped me to understand the why as well as the where of Lille. Lille grew exponentially in the industrial 19th century, due to the textile industry. Its success, however, also brought difficulties in the form of disease and an astronomical infant mortality rate. Originally, like nearby Bruges or more exotic Venice, Lille had been crisscrossed with canals. These were used by the factories as well as the citizens for, well, everything. The city walls kept the population contained within a fairly restrained footprint. Eventually, the decision was made to fill in the canals when three successive waves of plague swept through in the course of a century. There are still places in the city where a smell of stinky drains emphasizes the wisdom of that decision!
3. City Bus Tour: The following day, I went on the bus tour with recorded commentary (and an over-eager driver who kept talking over that commentary),which helped me get a sense of where things were outside the historic core of the city and plan more visits, such as to the Porte de Paris and Befroi, a deco-era tower with a panoramic view of the city.
4. The Palais des Beaux Arts: Although its relief maps from the 18th century are currently being restored, there was still enough to see in a pleasant hour. The second floor houses several Rubens’ and this rather lovely sculpture of Napoleon’s son, for example.
Que voir à Lille (kuh vwar ah Leel) means “What to see in Lille” and I hope I have given you some ideas. Of course, the most enjoyable moments are the little corners one stumbles across par hasard. And to do that, just go for a wander. No admission required.
A tradition at my summer job in Paris has become doing an Escape Room as a bonding activity during the week that we prepare for the students to arrive. This year, a colleague suggested that we try a new venue, 
Costumed actors played the role of a troupe who have lost part of a musical score to the Phantom of the Opera. Our mission was to find the missing letters in order to complete the score. As usual, we had one hour to complete our task. If you are successful, your group will earn admission to hear the completed aria with the missing notes restored.
I don’t want to say too much in case I end up spoiling this for you, but it was a lot of fun in a tremendous setting. I think the setting was actually the biggest handicap for my group; several of them had never been to Opéra Garnier before and we lost time as they gazed around in awe at the ornate interior. It was an inventive way to explore a great Parisian landmark. L’échapper belle (lay-shap-ay bell) is to have a narrow or lucky escape. I hope that is your fate if you try Inside Opera.
For the last two years, I have tried a one word affirmation, as inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s 
My quest to lose weight was tougher. Despite some early success, no matter what I tried, my weight continued to creep up. In late summer, I found out that I had grown a rather substantial kidney stone that had to be surgically removed. Once it was gone, the weight fell off. The weight gain was really fluid retention due to a malfunctioning kidney. The lesson I learned there was that instead of beating myself up, I should seek medical advice if my body starts acting strangely. The DASH diet and I are now good friends to try to prevent the small stones in my other kidney from growing to the same mammoth proportions.
This year, I have selected SUFFICIENT, or SUFFISANT (soo-fee-zahn), or suffisante (soo-fee—zahnt) when referring to a feminine noun. How do I see applying this to my life? Well, for one thing, I really don’t need any more clothes. In my overly analytical way, I have been keeping track of what I wear on a monthly basis. I found that I typically wore five items of clothing in each major category most months (for example, five blouses, five sweaters, five dresses) and about ten different pairs of shoes in any given season. Yet, I have far more than five (or ten) seasonally appropriate items hanging at my disposal in any given month. When tempted to shop just for the sake of novelty, I’m telling myself that my wardrobe is more than suffisant to meet my sartorial needs.
I’m trying to be more reasonable about what I put my 
But suffisant also applies to things I need to do more of. For instance, part of my new anti-kidney stone lifestyle is supposed to be 100 ounces of fluids a day. One. Hundred Ounces. I have never once made this goal, peaking at about 64 ounces, and yet, the dietician and physician’s assistant both said that this was the most important change I could make. So, I’m going to be more diligent in tracking my fluid intake on my 
Next, is a 
Finally, a purely sentimental recommendation. Read a French translation of a childhood favorite. I recently finished 
