La Braderie

La Braderie is an annual event in Lille. What is it precisely? An enormous flea market. Enormous is an understatement, actually, because la Braderie is spread out all over downtown. Traffic is shut down and le centre ville is navigable only by foot and metro.

http://lilletourism.com/info-3-90-0-fr.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braderie_de_Lille

We spent the whole afternoon wandering around and only saw a few streets worth of vendors. Some of the narrow areas were very crowded, but others were fairly comfortable in spite of all the people. Many of the vendors had knock-off designer brands, second-hand things, food, and handmade jewelry. There was also a surprisingly large number of native North and South Americans, which seemed a little strange, playing new age music and selling t-shirts that people in the U.S. ignore at gas stations.

I found a couple of things to buy - we all did - and it was a great day in general. The weather was lovely, there were good food smells everywhere, and we didn't get there so early that we were all crabby by the end of the day. We were pretty tired of standing and walking after several hours, so we took the metro back and stopped at a restaurant called Hippopotamus. It was a nice place and we were able to eat and talk - and eat desert and talk some more - before walking back to Triolo.

"Moules-frites" is the traditional dish at La Braderie. It's mussels and french fries, and almost every restaurant we passed was advertising it. We didn't end up partaking, which I'm a little disappointed about, but we were full of candy and too tired to try to find a restaurant with a big enough table available when dinner time came around.