On 17 November, I travelled to Paris to take part in the first ever endometriosis race, Endorun. I've written about Paris in my endometriosis around the world series, if you missed it then click HERE. This time, I combined the trip with visiting friends outside the French capital, which is how I ended up in Lille in the north of France, famous for its cold weather, where I spent three days.
The city is located in the north of the country, along the river Deűle, close to the Belgian border. Lille is the administrative centre of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, including the Nord department. It has the title of Cultural and Historic City of France. An unmissable experience is a walk through Lille's old town from the Palais Rihour to the Comtesse, with charming paved alleys lined with Flemish houses, tiny boutiques, grocers, galleries, cafés and restaurants everywhere you look.
The Palace of Fine Arts houses a unique collection of works by Donatello, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, Rodin, Monet, Chagall and Picasso, spread over 22 000 m². Lill is also home to the birthplace of Charles de Gaulle, which I didn't have the chance to visit due to time constraints.
And the bottom line: what is life like living with endometriosis in Lille? Well, what can I say, it's not easy.
At least as far as eating out is concerned, the number of options is very close to zero. The local specialities in small Flemish restaurants are mainly meat and fish based, and there is no fashion for a sugar-free or gluten-free lifestyle, so if you're looking for a sugar-free or gluten-free version for breakfast, you'll be met with a wide-eyed stare. These small local Flemish restaurants all serve Flemish beer stew (carbonade Flemand), waterzoï ragu and the unpronounceable and very unappetisingly jelly-like potjevleesch, and of course these light dishes need to be washed down with a local beer.
There are a lot of restaurants, I've followed up, we've called a lot of them to see if they have any vegan options, but usually they don't even know exactly what vegan is, and even if we could explain it with great difficulty, they would shake their heads, no, they can't put together a salad, it's impossible. I
at home and in other European countries, it's OK to go vegan in any restaurant, even if the menu doesn't specifically include only plant-based dishes, but if nothing else, they can always jazz up a simple green salad - not so in Lille- "if it's not on the menu, it can't be." , or "Vegan? This is French cuisine, everything has an eye."
TThe fact is that in Lille, it is completely unnecessary to bother with traditional restaurants, you won't find any endometriosis diet friendly options for you. And the best saying is: Vegan? Yeah, who eats only vegetables. Wow, we're not the best restaurant for that, but if you're really insistent, maybe we can throw together a cheese plate." Super:-D
So, if traditional wasn't an option, we had to find a vegan restaurant, so we had breakfast one morning at Pause where they sliced and peeled delicious fruit for fresh salads and smoothies in front of us, and I also had a heavenly vegan cake. At Le Pain Quotidien, we stumbled upon a random all-you-can-eat muffin and an almond milk turmeric latte, it didn't even say it was a vegan option, but we found out it was.
Turmeric latte is a really special experience, I recommend you to try it, I asked for the recipe, I will write it soon!
The others were all eating a Flemish special called Welsh for breakfast, which is very rough, imagine a big plate with a sweetish bread base, like brioche, a nice piece of bacon on top, lots of melted cheddar cheese, spices, and then a fried egg on top.
I showed a photo of it on our Facebook page, you can find it here. I have a theory, the Flemish have to eat a calorie-dense diet to survive the bone-chilling cold that greets the unsuspecting visitor.
The weird outfit you see in the picture below is proof that it's really cold in Lille: I brought underwear, a T-shirt, a sweater, a winter coat, but my basic winter gear proved so inadequate that I had to get another winter coat and wore them both at the same time.
I shared this theory with the locals, of course, only after they told me that they had heard that in Hungary, in Budapest, people drink so much pálinka to survive the bone-chilling cold of Budapest:-D
So breakfasts we could manage, but the rest of the meals we had problems with, they couldn't accommodate us as vegans anywhere. Luckily, we ate at a friend's house once, where they had a delicious all-you-can-eat meal, and twice we went back to Il Resto, a popular Italian restaurant in town, where they made me a delicious antipasti dish, despite nothing on the menu.
I scooped out the cucumber stuffed with cream cheese from the "vegan" bowl and scooped out the tuna slices, and finally I had a delicious endometriosis diet friendly dish:-D
As for sports, in France there isn't a gym on every corner, and it's no different in Lille, we found one on the roof of the shopping centre next to the train station, but it's not running at full capacity as far as I could tell. But there is a park, a Parc de la Citadelle where a surprisingly large number of people are running, jogging, which is really incredible to me that many of them are not even wearing technical gear, just plain jogging pants or shorts with long socks.
And I would freak out if I had to take off one of my two winter coats:-D
I finally lived out my sporting passion on the treadmill in our hotel, and soothed my conscience that I was coming from the EndoRun after all, so I didn't have to go out into the freezing cold to run.
You can buy healthy snacks, endometriosis diet friendly things, seed milks, soy, everything that the eye can see in the shops of the Bio C Bon franchaise chain, or in the cute little épicerie fine shops where we could choose from oils, spices and healthy bits and bobs. Or we could have, if we hadn't been travelling with only a cabin-compatible potty, so we were precluded from buying any liquids as souvenirs. What I really liked was that you could taste all the spices and syrups from the little bottles.
I was certainly fully prepared for the Hungarian Christmas season in this cold city, where everything was already decked out in festive decorations and lights in mid-November.
It's a good thing I can handle the Christmas hassle, because it started early this year. If you could do with a little help yourself, I'd like to recommend our latest publication, the Stress Free Christmas in Endometriosis Recipe and Workbook, which should make it easy for you to take on challenges.
That's it for Lille, our endometriosis around the world series will soon be updated. In the meantime, if you'd like to tell us about your place of residence, if you're far from our little country, we look forward to hearing from you.
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