DAY 4: Compiègne to Lille (Hotel Carlton)

A rather miserable day today - on again-off again rain. But that didn't stop us walking up to the Chateau of Compiegne after another excellent hotel breakfast.

We were the only people in the entire chateau for the whole time we were there - over an hour. (As we were leaving, another couple arrived to take over our viewing duties.) There were a large number of museum guides, all focussed on us, and we were politely, but firmly, told on several occasions that we were going the wrong way or seeing something in the wrong order and were made to turn back. It was a bit unnerving at times! I had one eye trained on the exhibits and the other on the guards to make sure they weren't about to descend on us.

But the chateau was a delight. It was home to various kings of France, and then to Napoleon and Josephine and Marie-Louise, whom he divorced Josephine to marry. Every room was lavishly decorated and full of paintings, sculptures, beautiful furniture, amazing chandeliers and more. Here is a photo of the Empress's tasteful bedroom, full of images of fecundity and opulence. Wonderful!

Bedroom of the Empress

After the chateau, we went back to the hotel, packed our bags and headed off to our next town - Lille. It was a 2 hour drive on lovely big main roads - but with an astonishing number of trucks! All went smoothly until we got into Lille itself. Our hotel is in Old Town, right next to the main square. There seemed to be a lot of road works going on and streets blocked off (which the GPS was totally unaware of) and we ended up going down a lot of streets marked 'Authorised traffic only', with pedestrians absolutely everywhere, which I found extremely nerve-wracking. Jim just ignored the GPS after a while and managed to find his own way to the hotel. Thank goodness! We parked out front to unload our suitcases and the hotel staff told us, in a very offhand manner, to just head off to the left to the parking lot. We drove off into the main square and by great luck managed to find out where to park, which turned out just to be a public parking lot. We had to navigate around a busy Christmas market and a ferris wheel to find it, so it was all rather stressful. I felt I needed a stiff drink and a lie down after that, but Jim didn't seem very concerned.

We instead went off to find some lunch and ended up having French onion soup and a glass of white wine. It was okay - but not great. We are yet to have a really good meal in France.

After a rest at the hotel, we headed out for dinner. We were all rugged up as it was pretty seriously cold - but, at least, not raining. We went to a small family run restaurant called Bistrot Franquette, that supposedly serves a small menu of traditional French cuisine. Hmmm.... I ended up having cauliflower tempura and rice croquettes, which were nice - but came swimming in a kind of pea soup. Is that traditionally French? Jim made more classic French choices of duck terrine and filet mignon. The food was fine, but nothing special. So we are still waiting for that extraordinary meal.