Visit : Kortrijk, Belgium

One of the things that I appreciate the most about Lille is the proximity of this town with other European cities. Within 30 minutes of train ride and a merely 8€ of train ticket, we arrive at our neigbour country Belgium.

So last weekend Mr and I went to Kortrijk (or Courtrai in french), one of the last Belgian towns that we haven’t visited yet. Truthfully, we didn’t have any real plans in mind but I did some reasearch online of course before going, just to get myself informed of interesting things to see there.

There was a thick fog when we first arrived at the town and we barely could see things around. We arrived around 10a.m. and town was still slowly rolling out.

We first took a tour at the historical neighbourhood, mainly at the street of beguinage. Classified by UNESCO as World’s Heritage, béguinage is a small community  of religious movement of women founded in the 13th century. The houses are now served as residential area as well as home to few cafés and restaurants.

Much of the architecture in Kortrijk is Medieval-style, as you can see in the pictures above. In the newer section of the town however, there is also a modern indoor shopping centre, K in Kortrijk where you can find shops such as Zara and H&M.

We went back to Lille in the afternoon after a healthy lunch at La Place restaurant and a generous tea at a tea house. It was a short visit but it was what we needed, a little change of scene without changing much.

Have a nice day!