Christmastime in Paris

While I'm not spending my Christmas break in France, I did get to experience a lot of what Christmas in France is. Christmas in Paris is beautiful, quite cold, and remarkably less touristy than I was expecting. The best part, in my humble opinion, is the French Christmas Market, also known as the Marché de Noël. I spoke a bit about this a few weeks ago when I was in Reims; pretty much the deal is that they are awesome. There's cheap (and hot!) food, street vendors everywhere selling everything from huge blocks of homemade chocolate to handmade jewelry. In Paris, the big Christmas market is on the Champs-Élysées, running from Place de la Concorde to about halfway to the Arc de Triomphe. It's beautiful and fabulous and a really great way to spend an afternoon or evening.

 First thing you gotta know about a French Christmas Market is the food and booze. Traditionally, street food year-round consists of crêpes, cold sandwiches, and hot kebabs. At Christmas, you get that, but you also get hot wine, churros (not exactly the same as the ones back home; pretty much they're differently shaped donuts with some sugar sprinkled on top, served in a cornet like a crêpe), and waffles with all sorts of good stuff on top. And it's all very reasonably priced.

This here is my freshly made nutella-filled crêpe. It's hot, freaking delicious, and absolutely terrible for me. The Christmas markets are like the State Fairs back home. Deliciously terrible food everywhere you look, along with the lame kiddie rides and tons of guys selling their wares everywhere. I didn't get to go to the fair much as a kid, so I'm rediscovering the awesomeness.








Here we've got the Champs-Élysées all lit up with the trimmings of a Christmas market. There are booths lining the avenue about 1 kilometer (.6 miles), up to the Rond Point (that's the halfway mark to the Arc de Triomphe). After that, you hit the high-end shopping areas leading towards the Arc de Triomphe which are also totally decked out in Christmas shenanigans. At the opposite end of the Champs-Élysées is Place de la Concorde with this crazy huge Farris Wheel. It's part of the Christmas market, so it's not there year round.







Here you can see the Farris Wheel in all its glory, towering over the city.

The pictures I took up in the wheel didn't turn out so great because of the glare, but here are some of the better ones.

Part of our group going up in the Farris Wheel. We're pretty cute, aren't we?




 









<--- The Eiffel Tower, all lit up and gorgeous.

To the right, there's the Champs-Élysées again, this time from way up high.






And below, there's the Musée du Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens.

Most of my American friends are semester-only students, so they all left last Friday. It was a little sad to say goodbye, but we did get to have a really fun last night together. I realize that I haven't talked in depth about them much on the blog, so I'm going to take this moment to make their ears burn a bit now that they've made it back to the States. 

 This is Rouge, also known as Red, also known as Alexandra. This is her "it's my last night in Paris!" face. She's pretty awesome. We've bonded over our mutual Feminazi tendencies and just general similarities personality-wise. She's definitely one of my favorite people these days cause she's a generally awesome person.

This is Claire. She's pretty fabulous as well. She's going to be a famous movie star some day. We have been affectionately dubbed "the Grandmas" of the group, because we aren't big partiers or drinkers. Claire is great to just hang out with; go to a coffee shop and chill, or see a movie or anything else relatively low-key. The introvert that I am immediately spotted a kindred spirit in this fabulous friend.

Finally, there's Sheila. She's the one who's hilarious without ever trying. She's Honduran, and has the cutest Hispanic accent when she speaks French. It's freaking adorable. She's been in my grammar class all year, which has been really fun. It's really great to have someone around who's always making us laugh (though very often, she doesn't really know why what she said is funny). Cross-cultural humor always cracks me up, so she's great to have around.






I had to say good-bye to all these cool people, which was really sad, but the upside is that now I'm on vacation. I'll probably be updating a couple of times this week and next week, because I'm spending my holidays in Edinburgh and London. I only just got here, so I don't have much to say yet, but what I have done has been pretty great. I wrote this post in a little cafe called "The Elephant House", a really great little hole-in-the-wall which just happens to be the place where the first Harry Potter book was written. Seriously. I sat and wrote for an hour or two in the same place where J.K. first created Harry. Pretty awesome, right? Tonight I have plans to go to a Christmas Eve service at Saint Giles Cathedral. St. Giles was pretty much the first Presbyterian Church ever, founded by John Knox himself. You non-Presbies may not get how cool that is, but I'm pretty pumped. So stay tuned! There's lots more to come in the next couple of days!