Our trip to France – Lille Christmas Market – 26th - 27th November 2025

Written by Zara P Year 8

Upon arrival to Calais on Wednesday, we drove straight to the Old Bakery in Lille. There we learnt how to say the ingredients used to make bread in French. We took turns to place the loaves into the furnace with the paddle. After that, as we were leaving, we had the opportunity to buy something from the bakery itself and got a free pain au chocolat.

    

Then, we went to the Christmas Market and those of who were brave enough went on the Ferris wheel. It was truly breathtaking, watching the sun set as the city’s lights flickered on one by one. The Christmas Market had many stalls, each with a different food or drink that was freshly made such as hot chocolate, macarons, doughnuts stuffed with filling. There were also stalls where beautiful handmade jewellery and other creations were on display, ready to be purchased for a very nice Christmas gift. Next to the Ferris Wheel was a Christmas tree, decorated with lights and a star at the top.

    

We then made our way over to Westfield Shopping Centre in Lille and we split into groups of minimum 2 and had 45 minutes to look around and buy something. The shopping centre was huge with multiple floors so we had to remember where we came from.

And, after a long day of travelling, we headed to the hotel where we were handed the key to our rooms and got ready for dinner. Dinner was pasta bake with Bolognese sauce and vegetarians had a salad and noodles with parmesan. Dessert was something the French eat sometimes – a Nutella sandwich. Once we had finished with dessert, we went up to our rooms and had some free time to play some games in other’s rooms but we all had to go back to our rooms at 9:30pm so that we were ready for lights out at 10:00pm.

The next day, we had breakfast in the hotel. We had a variety of different food to choose from as our breakfast options like croissants, cereal, pains au chocolat, yoghourt. There were two slots for breakfast: 8:00 and 8:30. After breakfast, the teachers went around for a room check to make sure everyone’s rooms were as spotless as they were before we arrived.

 

   

We hopped on the coach with all our luggage and drove to Palais Beaux-Arts. Since we had arrived with time to spare, we looked around at the shops near the museum. The museum itself was filled with ancient paintings andstatues. There were some abstract pieces made with tape to form different things; there was a red one in the shape of a bullseye, a blue one to make a triangle pattern and a black one to make a circular pattern.

  

 

Once we had gone around the whole museum, we went back on the coach and drove to Calais to get on the Eurotunnel. We arrived back at school at around 18:00 with memories that would last us a lifetime.

 

Return to the Main Newsletter