Friday 17 September Lille DC's 40th

Friday 17th September

Am off to Lille for three days with a group of friends to celebrate Daryl Capper’s (DC) 40th birthday.
After picking my brother Paul up I drive to Aldershot Cricket Club to pick up the remaining nineteen passengers.
Even though I’m driving I enjoy these trips as there is always something or somebody who makes you laugh.
We are away from the cricket club by just after 06:30, even Gos is here. Gos is a bit of a legend when it comes to drinking and can sometimes oversleep! To make sure he is up he has spent the night in the cricket club and when Paul went in to look for him at 06:00 he was sitting watching Frasier with a pint of cider in his hand!
Folkestone is very quiet and after some time in the terminal we catch the 09:20 shuttle which departs on time.
From Calais we drive directly to the hotel and I’m parked in the lay-by outside at 12:30.
The rooms aren’t ready yet but we can leave our luggage in a room close to the reception and I can leave the coach outside of the hotel. Now that is a right result because I was expecting to park a fair walk away by the international railway station.
The whole group decide to go off in search of a bar and restaurant and I’m glad to be going along too! It’s always nice to have a beer after a hard days work!
I haven’t been to Lille that often and do not know the centre very well and am pleasantly surprised by how lovely it all looks. Lille was the European City of Culture in 2004 so they have cleaned all the buildings. I haven’t been here since before then and am impressed.
We find a restaurant off the main square and all twenty one of us sit down outside and enjoy our lunch in the sun. I had a bowl of mussels and a couple of beers which went down very well.
The bill is settled, about €600, and we all return to the hotel to claim our rooms.
The hotel is modern, clean and basic, just the job for a couple of days away. The rooms are clean and functional, I think they saved money by missing out on a few doors. The small cupboard has no door nor does the shower, where you don’t even have a curtain. The television is on the wall and the table is portable and designed like a u shape where the bottom stand can slide under the bed and the top over the bed, rather like in a hospital. The bedside tables are clear plastic and look more like short stools than table.
What do I do? Have a lie down, try to read and fall asleep or shower and go straight back down for a drink before dinner? What a dilemma!
The shower and pre dinner drinks wins.
We all gather in the bar at the hotel and wander into town looking for a restaurant for twenty one. We are all still together which is nice.
We find a restaurant, called the Omnia and sit down to have a good meal. The Omnia is very dark inside with low lighting and red buttoned cushion decorating the seating areas. All very French.
The restaurant was once a theatre and then a brothel and then a theatre again showing pornographic films. With the decor you are not surprised, if you could imagine a typical French brothel in times past this is how it would have looked.
I spend the evening drinking sparkling water as we are going to Brussels tomorrow and are leaving at 08:30. At the end of the meal DC asks me outside to speak to him.
As they are having a good evening that could last a while they do not now want to go to Brussels tomorrow, only to Mons for the horseracing. We do not need to leave until 10:30. I’m happy with that.Back at the hotel I have a coffee and leave them to it. Some of them have gone into a Cuban bar close to the hotel and I learn later that most of them ended up over there. The barman looked like Claude Makalele, the ex Chelsea player so was christened Claude.