Train from Brussels nat-aéroport to Lille-Europe

By now all the cheap tickets will probably be gone, and they'd tie you to a specific train which could be a problem if your flight was delayed. Buy at the airport but don't expect them to be cheap. Also note that there are no direct trains from Brussels Airport to Lille and you'll have to change at Brussels Midi. Also, if you encounter a real Flemish nationalist on the ticket desk they may want to use the Dutch name for Lille which is Rijsel (pronounced RYE-zell).

Only nutjobs, delusional lost-in-life students, politicians and the Northern European version of trailer tr@@h would make a case of not knowing that Lille should be called Rijssel. More rolling eyes would come from people calling Antwerpen as Anvers, or Liège as Luik.

Now to practical detail (language fun aside): to get to Lille from BRU you can take three IC trains (changing in Bruxelles Midi and Tournai) in 1h56 or also take a high-speed train between Bruxelles Midi and Lille 1h12 total time. I'd go for the later because the last connection Tournai-Lille is done in terrible local trains, always full, and very uncomfortable (they are worse than MARTA commuter trains in Atlanta).

With only 2 days before you go I'd worry about much more important things like making sure all your other ducks in a row. You won't get any possible discounts at this very late date so don't sweat it.

hmmm. If you 're going to hassel somebody for helping one of our guests about pronunciation and Lille/Rijsel, can't you at least get your spelling right and remove your spurious "s". And we know, as you have yourself said, you hate public transport. I see about one connection per hour from the airport to Lille. Many involve changing at Midi and taking a TGV which winds up in the South of France. It will need seat reservation but that shouldn't be too difficult on Monday I wouldn't have thought. One or two involve changing at Gent St Pieters, IC to IC. Some connections are shown as using Eurostar from Brussels to Lille. Eurostar don't sell "domestic" tickets which don't go under the water. I'd take the first decent connection after I got off the plane. We know Monday but not the time.

Sorry, I couldn't resist: Even though I don't know a word of Dutch (which of course is not an exact translation of Vlaamse ... although people on both sides of the fence tend to say "Dutch" when speaking in English about their daily language use ...), you also wouldn't want to offend the apocryphal ticket agent by saying Bruxelles-Midi. You'd say Brussel-Zuid. That's actually worth knowing because the column signs you see from the train pulling in can be one or the other. You might want to look up a NY Times Sunday Travel article on classic Flemish food in Lille, FR. It was about a year ago.

Hi. First post. And hopefully sufficiently related to, if not entirely bang on, the topic, to be ok. Viz: it seems to me that the last direct trains from brussel to lille run at about 7.55 in the evening. Does anybody know if this is true? seems very early, and they run in the other direction till much later. am i missing something?

cesare that is correct. You found the last direct service; and the last service of all for the night isn't many minutes later with a change at Tournai. By hitchhiking on the thread from a year ago you have ensured that the original poster will get an email every time somebody answers you. You'd be best off having your own thread(s).