"Extreme day trips" — travelling to, visiting, and returning from a foreign destination in a single day — are something of a social media trend right now (though day trips are nothing new). While it's a convenient way to see a new place without the expense of overnight accommodation or eating into your annual leave, the environmental impacts of flying for such a short trip have been criticised. But you don't need to set foot on a plane to do a day trip abroad, nor do you need to have a gigantic budget.
How to visit Lille from London in a day
I visited Lille in a single day on the Eurostar direct from St Pancras, leaving London early in the morning, and arriving back here in the evening. Accounting for the time difference, I had a total of nine hours in Lille (eight hours of time to roam, once you factor in arriving back at the station in enough time to catch the train home).
Here's a time-stamped account of the day, to show you just how much you can see and do in a short time from London:
5.18am: Arrive at an eerily quiet St Pancras station. Pick up a pain au chocolat for breakfast, in an attempt to get into the French spirit. Wonder if wearing a beret would have been overkill.
5.30am: Enter the Eurostar terminal. The recommended arrival time on my ticket is 5.49am, but my naturally cautious nature has got me here early and the Eurostar staff let me through. After scanning my ticket at automatic gates, I join the queue for passport control, but it moves fairly quickly.
5.43am: Reach the lounge which is absurdly busy for such an ungodly hour. I guess lots of other people had the same idea of catching a very early train. It's standing room only in the lounge until one train is announced, at which point the crowd thins out slightly, before more people pile in. It might be home to the busiest branch of Pret in all of London.
6.34am: My train to Lille begins boarding. Bit of a scramble in the lounge as a train to Amsterdam is called two minutes earlier, leading to a giant pile-up of passengers and suitcases as people try to zigzag past each other to reach the escalator to their own platform. Grateful I'm travelling light with just a rucksack for the day, and don't have a wheelie suitcase tangled up in that mess.
6.43am: Reach my aisle seat on the train. I'm travelling in Standard class, but the seats are notably roomier than on most standard domestic trains in the UK. This'll do nicely. Unpack the essentials from my bag and settle in for the journey with that previously mentioned pain au chocolat.
7.04am: The train glides out of St Pancras right on schedule. Nobody has taken the window seat next to me — one of the few empty seats on the whole carriage — so I shuffle on over to make the most of the views of London waking up outside. I manage to see east London, the QEII bridge, and the mothballed Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International stations whizz past the window... and the next thing I know it's dark. The early hour has got the better of me and I nod off in deepest Kent, waking up somewhere in the tunnel.
9.28am (French time): Arrive in Lille, walk straight off the train, and out of the station (all passport control/immigration business is handled before you board, so when you arrive you simply walk straight out). Take a few moments to work out where I am before navigating my way on foot — via some rather confusing roadworks — to my first stop of the day, around a 20-minute walk from Lille Europe station.
9.50am: Arrive at the Belfry of Lille Town Hall (Beffroi de Lille), a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a viewing platform 104 metres above the city. It seems as good a place as any to get my bearings and start the day, and I've booked the 10am slot. At the moment, the large wooden church door is firmly locked, so I sit on a brick wall opposite and wait. Gradually, a small crowd gathers, and a member of staff arrives, along with much gesturing to explain to visitors in several languages that the door is locked and we may or may not be waiting for someone to unlock it from the inside. It all feels very Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a short delay ensues.
10.10am: Enter the Belfry. All large bags (including day rucksacks) have to be left in lockers in the entrance hall. From here, it's a few flights of stairs up to the main reception area and small gift shop, and either a lift or stairs to continue the adventure. In the spirit of conserving energy for a long day ahead, I opt for the lift, a creaking, open cage of a contraption which leaves me regretting my decision instantly (the fact that the website describes the lift as "authentic" was probably the clue...). Mental note made: Take the stairs back down.
The lift door opens onto an indoor viewing gallery, offering 360-degree views of Lille and its surrounds, interspersed with information boards pointing out the main sights. From this perspective, Lille appears a rather industrial and — sorry, Lille — unpretty city, with a few picturesque pockets dotted here and there.
It's only on my second turn around this floor that I notice another small, spiral staircase leading upwards to an open-air viewing gallery, and follow it up to a breezy deck. Same views, from just a few metres higher.
10.55am: Having got an eyeful of the view, I make my way back downstairs (stopping at the gift shop for a couple of postcards — in the spirit of efficiency, to skip souvenir shops later), collect my bag and leave the Belfry, heading to the Porte de Paris just next door. The Arc de Triomphe-style construction looks magnificent against the blue skies of early spring, the colour of the precision-planted tulips just beginning to emerge.
From here, it's a short walk to Grand Place, the large open square which is the centre of Old Lille. My only set plan for the rest of the day is my lunch reservation, so I wander and see where life, and Lille, takes me. Get distracted by what appears to be a small cathedral — but turns out to be the Palais Rihour — down a side street, and head towards it, discovering a Tourist Information Centre inside.
11.25am: Emerging from the Palais Rihour, I take a moment to sit down, gather my bearings, and plan my next move. A quick glance at a map tells me it's around a 25-minute walk to the Citadel, a large park home to a military fortress, and one of the city's sights which was on my "if I have time" list for the day. My lunch booking is at 1pm. I can do this.
11.50am: After a power walk through Lille's streets, arrive to find the Citadel fortress entrance closed and encircled by scaffolding. Decide it's time to move on when a woman in police or military uniform with a dog emerges. Find a bench and sit in the sun for a few minutes before making the 25-minute walk back to the centre of town and the main square, allowing me to see some of the city beyond the tourist centre along the way. Pass a few minutes browsing in some stores, including the large Furet du Nord book shop.
1pm: Arrive at the restaurant I've booked for lunch: Magmatic. From the outside, it's nothing but a window covered in a floor-to-ceiling black-out curtain, but inside, it's exactly the sort of gimmick most Londoners — myself included — would turn their nose up at if it were in their own city. This, however, is not London, and I am on holiday (of sorts), so I'm dining in a volcano.
I'm led through a thick velvet curtain to the main restaurant, a single room with tables scattered around a central cone, which is designed to resemble the peak of a volcano. The walls and ceilings are alive with projections of burning rocks and magma eruptions, creating an immersive experience akin to London's own Lightroom — with dinner added. At £21.28 for a goat's cheese salad and a glass of juice, it's remarkably good value for a journey to the centre of a volcano, and a memorable meal to boot.
2.15pm: Leave the restaurant fed, refreshed and ready to do some serious exploring in the hours before I need to return to the station. I wander back towards the Grand Place, intending to explore the back streets to the north which I bypassed earlier, and stumble across the art market at Vieille Bourse de Lille. Stallholders sell books, artworks and prints in an ornate 17th-century courtyard.
Across Grand Place, those back streets contain a delightful number of chocolate shops — proper, old-style French chocolatiers that wouldn't look out of place in Joanne Harris's Chocolat — the highlight of which is the incredibly ornate Maison Meert, a time capsule of a store and tea room whose decorated interior wears its four centuries of history with pride.
A few streets further north, I swing by Aux Merveillieux de Fred, the original branch of the patisserie which now has branches in London (including, ironically, mere steps from the Eurostar platforms at St Pancras, if you don't fancy carrying your snackable souvenirs all the way home with you). Pastry chef Frédéric Vaucamps first invented his "Merveilleux" meringue treats in Lille in the 1980s, naming his first store after them in 1997. So really, it's an excellent way to have a little sugary pick-me-up under the guise of cultural history. Rude not to, when you put it like that.
Just around the corner from "Fred's" is the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille, something of an aesthetic surprise. It's cathedral by shape, and it has the requisite stained glass window, but its western facade appears almost Brutalist or unfinished, a grey, colourless hulk of a structure that's quite unlike any cathedral I've ever seen before. Entry is free, so I make my way up the stairs for a peek. Can confirm: very much a normal cathedral on the inside.
4pm: By this time, I'm flagging somewhat, so I make my way back to the station, via the large Westfield Euralille shopping centre next door. If I'm honest, I'm hoping for a bit of air con, and somewhere to get a drink and sit for a while. But the shopping centre is heaving with school children and teenagers who've just left college for the day, so I admit defeat and head back to Lille Europe station. Find a coffee shop in the sun, and sit and watch the world go by.
5.27pm: The gates open for passengers to go through passport control and enter the Eurostar lounge. My scheduled departure time is 6.37pm, but due to an issue further up the line in Brussels, it's delayed by about 20 minutes. Boarding begins, and my day in Lille is over.
7.24pm (UK time): Arrive back in London, 24 minutes later than scheduled, and wander straight off the train, along the platform, and out into St Pancras station, ready to head home — a mere 12 hours and odd minutes after I departed from that exact platform. In that time, I've climbed a bell tower, swung by a military fortress, dined in a volcano, all in a city I'd never been to before.
Total cost of a day trip to Lille
- Eurostar: £74 return
- Breakfast (at St Pancras): £3.30
- Lunch (Magmatic): £21.38
- Belfry entry (booked a few days in advance): £6.49
- Treats at Aux Merveilleux de Fred: £12.52
- Souvenirs: £3.48
Total: £121.17
For comparison, a few days before this trip, I'd taken an unrelated day trip from King's Cross — right next door to the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras — to York. Not only was the scheduled journey time on LNER to York longer than that on Eurostar to Lille, it was more expensive (around £88 return compared to Lille's £74 — though exact pricing depends on time of trip, how far you book ahead and various other factors). So next time you're planning a day or weekend trip in the UK, heading abroad might be an equally affordable option.
Tip for extreme day trips from London
Book ahead, and pick your time carefully
As with all travel, booking as far ahead as possible, and being flexible with days helps with keeping the cost down. I booked this trip on 6 January 2026 and travelled on 18 March 2026, a Wednesday. Naturally, weekend travel is generally more expensive. Eurostar does tend to run big sales a couple of times a year, so keep an eye out for those.
Build in time for passport control
Although boarding the Eurostar is less faff than navigating the airport for a flight, you'll still need to arrive at the station at least an hour early for your train to allow time to clear passport control (exact arrival time is on your ticket once you've booked). Something to bear in mind if you're planning to board an early morning service which might involve getting to St Pancras before the first Tubes of the day start running, and to take into account when calculating how much time you'll have to explore your destination.
The author booked and paid for this trip independently, and this article is in no way affiliated with Eurostar.
All photos by the author.
