We’ve been looking forward to this driving trip for a while! It was our first overseas trip in the Tesla and also our first long(ish) Europe driving trip. We’ve done a few short ones to Brugges in the past.
Researched a few places not to far from Calais and settled on Lille as our first stop. Drove to Dover and then on the ferry for an hour and a half to Calais.
We reached the ferry terminal quite early so we were one of the first few cars let in and that was great as we got a table close to the children’s play area and they had an amazing hour plus on the ferry!
They have a lovely soft play area and it does get very crowded so if you have young kids its worth getting there early so you can have a stress free ferry ride while the kids are playing and you can enjoy some quiet time with a cuppa! If you are lucky to have great weather (like we did) you can also enjoy some time on the ferry deck with the warm sun and summer breeze!
On reaching Calais we drove to our hotel – they didn’t have parking so we parked at a safe indoor car park near by. We stayed in Lille for 2 nights. It was our first visit to Lille and its such a lovely city. Its so close to Calais that I’m sure we will be back soon en route to some other place!
We thoroughly enjoyed our two days we had in Lille. Its a small town and you don’t really need the car once you are there – everything is walkable. We strolled around aimlessly, sat at roadside cafes, enjoyed the local food, hung out at the city square which has a huge water fountain in the centre, and took lots of pictures! Thats our idea of a lovely relaxed holiday! We don’t enjoy having packed days and ticking off a checklist of ‘must see things’. Yes, I would certainly google and look at some checklists but we tend to just pick a few things that we feel we can enjoy as a family….and leave some for our next visit!!
One of the things that was highly recommended by many was a visit to the local Lille Zoo which we did visit and spent a lovely couple of hours. The the kids loved it!
Here are some zoo pics…
So that was our two lovely days in Lille and we move on to the 2nd destination of our driving trip….Paris!!!
