[Back from World Tour] Our Move to Lille (2025)

We leave Jordan and the sun on a Thursday, only to find ourselves crammed into a Ryanair flight to Beauvais (it’s the cheapest direct flight we found to France from Amman). It’s with a hint of bitterness that we remember we started our world tour on a two-story Airbus A380 with Air France to Johannesburg. And we’re ending it on a Ryanair. It really feels like the end.

We stay a night in Beauvais because after 6 hours on Ryanair, we don’t feel like doing the Beauvais – Paris – Lille train all in one go.

Small consolation: before taking the train to Lille the next day, we visit the Beauvais Cathedral (which I’d never visited), and a man from the cathedral’s astronomical clock maintenance club opens the door for us and shows us the mechanism behind the clock.

We discover all sorts of hidden details (only visible up close) like dials showing the tide, the phases of the Moon, the planets, and the time in other cities. The clock is wound manually, hence the man’s role in looking after it. This clock is the work of just one man. It’s incredible!

So the world tour doesn’t end too badly after all 😉

Shopping

It’s Friday, the first week of the sales, and JB has to start work on Monday. Having lived with one suitcase each for over 8 years, we weren’t exactly rich in clothes. But to top it off, his (only) jeans gave out in Jordan the day before we returned. So he needs to be outfitted from head to toe. JB is very sensitive to textures, so ordering clothes online is a no-go – he has to feel and try them on. We manage to find him decent clothes off the rack. He’s still missing shoes, which we’ll pick up last-minute in Lille on Saturday. Given everything we need to buy for ourselves and the apartment, we’re lucky to arrive right in the middle of the winter sales.

As for me, I also have a whole winter wardrobe to put together, since I only have hiking clothes left – very warm but not the least bit urban. I talked about it here. In researching natural fibers, I suddenly rediscovered my passion for sewing. It stems from the realization that I can no longer find quality clothes off the rack without spending a fortune, so I might as well go for the best fabric in the world, but sew it myself.

Arrival in Lille

The Paris – Lille train feels like it takes forever. As we approach Lille, we pass fields covered in snow and start to panic: is it like this all winter? Our friend A., who lives in Lille, admits he didn’t dare warn us about the snow.

Looking back, it’s a bit audacious of us to move to a city we’d only visited once. I remember so little about it that when we got to Lille station, I was surprised by how small it was, and by the big shopping mall right next to it.

The warmth of the people from the North is immediately noticeable: our Uber driver and our Airbnb host are super nice. We get the feeling that people here will do everything they can to help us. Our Airbnb host even put us in touch with his real estate agent friend, which is how we found our apartment.

We’re in luck because despite the leftover snow, the following days are sunny every morning. Lille is a really, really beautiful city. Even though I keep getting lost in its little streets, it charms me every time I wander among its old houses.

JB at Work

So JB only has Sunday to “land” and get ready to return to the “metro – work – sleep” grind. The famous “rat race“. But we can already cross “metro” off his daily routine. Having spent the previous 8.5 years in hotels and Airbnbs in city centers, we’re used to doing everything on foot and hate public transit. JB often jokes that he decided to go on a world tour because of line 13 of the Paris metro (which is partly true). He’s not about to start taking it again now that the trip is over. So our Airbnb is just a 15-minute walk from the city center, and JB walks to work in about twenty minutes. It’s not a bad way to decompress after a workday.

Most of his colleagues live in the suburbs because you only have to go a little ways from Lille – 20 minutes by metro or tram – to get a house.

The company JB works for is very well organized. For the first two weeks, he’s just in training (first in English, then in French). He meets tons of colleagues. He realizes the certification he got is useful but is a drop in the bucket compared to all the new knowledge he has to pick up quickly. It’s only from the third week that JB starts to be productive. Starting a new job in a new field is tiring enough, but doing it after 8.5 years of freelancing around the world is really tough, and I really admire him for not giving up. If you want to know more about JB’s career change, check this out.

Funny side note: most of the employees in the company’s Lille office are from the North. When they learn JB has just moved to the area, several ask, “but why Lille?” After he explains his background, they look at him like he’s an alien.

Apartment Hunting

I’m starting ASAP my search for an apartment to rent. Real estate agencies don’t respond to visit requests; you have to call them, almost harass them. Finally, I have appointments to visit two apartments. The first is in the city center, right next to the main square, a dream location. The second is in a residential neighborhood in Vieux-Lille. After considering all the criteria, I decide to take the apartment in Vieux-Lille, a bit further away (a 23-minute walk from the station), much smaller, but with a south-facing exposure, double glazing, and fully furnished. The cold wave constantly reminds me of the importance of having sunlight coming into the apartment (even though our friend A., to scare us, explains that in Lille, you only see the sun two or three days a year), and limiting heating thanks to double glazing. I made an estimate on Ikea and furnishing an entire apartment would cost me a lot and, above all, really bore me. And then, taking an apartment a bit further away allows me to get some exercise too. If I were in the city center, I’d have a 3-minute walk and I’d stay in my apartment forever.

We were very afraid that our application would be rejected, but the advantage of having remained French tax residents throughout is that our paperwork is in order, and with tax returns, company balance sheets, etc., our application is validated by the insurance.

Our apartment was lived in by the owners before being redecorated to be put on Airbnb. When Airbnb tenants broke the kitchen window, the owners changed their minds and put it up for rent. That’s how we ended up with an apartment fully furnished, decorated. We just need to come with our suitcases. That’s exactly what I’m looking for!!! We keep this mindset of freedom. I sold my entire apartment on Leboncoin before the round-the-world trip, and it remains a trauma. I never want to do it again; I don’t want to have my own furniture, having to buy every spoon, every bowl. The advantage of having owners who lived there is that the furniture is good quality; and everything is designed to be practical. Having lived all these years in Airbnb, we regularly stay in places that are very pretty but not very functional; that’s not the case here. There’s plenty of storage, micro details that I appreciate enormously (for example, a place to hang guests’ coats). However, they seem large because everything is very high for me and I often have to use a step stool.

Then comes the moment when:

• JB drives me to pick up my leatherworking/bookbinding tools and my books from my sister’s (she lent me her sewing machine in passing)
• we go to Ikea to buy me stuff to set up a workshop
• the machines I can’t afford to buy with a nomadic life arrive: a new Lenovo dual-screen laptop; and a Silhouette Cameo 5 with its electrostatic mat that I’ve dreamed of for a long time

And here’s what it looks like: a workshop all to myself. The vertical dual-screen laptop allows me to have two screens while using very little space. So I watch sewing tutorials on one screen while sewing, and on the other screen, there’s my podcast or audiobook.

Honestly, when the IKEA tables arrived, I realized they were huge. But fabrics are often 160cm wide, folded in half that’s 80cm, so I need at least 80cm of width to cut my fabrics.

It takes me a while to find my favorite shops (butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer, cutler, haberdashery, dry cleaner) and buy some small missing items (kitchen knives, power strips…). Every day, packages arrive and it becomes super tedious to have to receive them all day long, deal with the boxes, return products…, but I’m relieved not to have to furnish an entire apartment; because even shopping at Ikea doesn’t excite me like it used to (it’s age, probably). The problems we no longer had to deal with before (water heater, heating, energy consumption) become ours. One day, JB yells in my ears: “we consumed 150 euros of electricity in one week!!!”. We turn off ASAP all the heaters, and thanks to a power strip that measures electricity consumption, we discover that it’s simply because of the towel warmer in the bathroom that I was leaving on all day to dry clothes. Oops.

Add to that a robot vacuum-mop for the floor, and a super-equipped kitchen (even if you need a master’s degree to operate each machine, for example 4 buttons just to start the microwave), we’re living our best sedentary life. Thanks to the south-facing exposure, we enjoy, when there’s sun, beautiful light for several hours a day and it’s pure bliss!

JB takes several weeks to learn and come to work every day (I prepare him a bento for his lunch) before starting to telecommute. His company offers on-demand telecommuting, almost unlimited. In principle, you have to wait until the end of the probation period to benefit from it, but his manager is OK for him to start right away. He also appreciates having a large second screen, a comfort that wasn’t possible during our long years of travel. The apartment being in a quiet place, we can work well and stay focused.

I’ll show you some photos of the city center and Vieux-Lille. I really like these streets that become 100% pedestrian on weekends.

Then, after a month and a half, I miss Paris too much, and I take a small pretext to do a round trip there in a day. I’ll tell you about my day in Paris here.

In short, we still struggle a bit to say that Lille is now our city. I still feel like I’m in an Airbnb, but I think this feeling will fade with time, especially since all my tools are now with me. I spend the whole day creating, improving my skills, and I love it so much—I finally have the dream workshop I’ve been dreaming of for so long.