Christmas Time in Paris

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I love Christmas. I love Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Christmas carols, and Christmas food. It was certainly difficult to be away from our families, but Paris responded wonderfully to our need for Christmas type stuff to do. Around the 5th of December, the entire city started to put up all of their Christmas stuff, and I had a field day. All the local markets had decorations up; even the fish store had a blue Christmas arrangement.
Around the city, about 13 temporary Christmas markets opened up. They were like our swap meets back home. You could buy gifts, food and there are even food stands where you can try out some Alsacian dishes. Alsace is a region on the French/German border. So, like Tyler and I discovered, Alsacian food is heavy (we had potatoes au gratin and sausage) but mild and very appropriate for the coldish winter weather. And it was getting cold. Tyler and I had stopped doing Karate outside, and were limited to what we could do in the apartment.
We spent most of our free time exploring the city, well bundled up, looking for Christmassy stuff to do and see. We went to several of the outdoor markets where we enjoyed “Vin Chaud” and saw the big department store light displays. Notre Dame had a huge Christmas tree out in front that was cool to see. We also headed over to the Champs Elysees to check out the Christmas lights/tree displays.
Paris was crazy busy with people shopping for the holidays. Both Tyler and I went out several times on our own to do our gift buying. We also had an interesting time trying to receive our packages from our parents. The French and American mail systems do not seem to translate very well. However, once we did get them it was really cool. Our parents sent us a lot of great stuff, a computer game a CD, warm clothes, books, a bread bag, yummy smelly stuff and candy. They also sent us a really cool set of folding picture frames with everyone’s (including our pets) pictures in them.
What I really wanted to get for Christmas was a tree. We had looked around at all the tree lots but didn’t really find anything reasonable. Finally, one of the florists near our house got a bunch of tiny Christmas trees, and we went down and picked one out. We also got a few strings of cheap lights from one of the nearby junk stores and some Christmas potpourri, so our studio was looking and smelling pretty festive. I also got a Christmas music CD, so although we were not home, we felt very Christmassy.
Christmas morning we got up and opened all our presents in our pajamas. Tyler had been harassing me for weeks to let him open his presents, but the only ones I let him open were the long underwear and gloves that I got him. It had just been way too cold, and we went to Switzerland where it was even colder. I made a yummy dinner again, and we ate an entire very small turkey by ourselves. We spent the majority of the end part of the day talking to friends and family. Even Sensei and Sensei Martha gave us a call. They told us about the winter promotions and all the new black belts. It was great to hear from everyone, and it made us feel like we were home.
For the most part December was a fairly laid back month for us. We went on vacation, and I didn’t have too much school work to do before the break. However the last week of December and the first of January were awful for me, I had two large papers due and a couple of other assignments in addition to preparation for finals. So we did as much fun stuff as we could before I had to buckle down. You can read all about our trip to Lucerne in the previous entry.

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Photos

Notre Dame at Christmas Time
On Christmas day, Tyler and I went over to Ile de la Cite. Notre Dame had this enormous tree out in front.

Champs Elysees at Christmas
Tyler took this picture of me one night when we were checking out all of the window displays on the Champs Elysees.

Local Bakery Decorates for Christmas
All the stores on our street put up Christmas decorations, it was pretty!

Chistmas Trees on Champs Elysees
The City of Paris puts out hundreds of trees all over town durring the Christmas holiday.

Lights Up on the Champs Elysees
Our camera does not take the best at night pictures, so here you can see how the Christmas lights looked on the Champs Elysees.

At Night...
As you can see, even though Tyler insisted on using my head as a tripod, our nighttime picture turned out a little blurry.

A Whole Lot of Potatoes
This is the Alsacian food booth at one of the many Christmas fairs. We hung around to watch for a while; every batch he made took like 3 huge bags of precut potatoes, several boxes of cream, and a couple rounds of cheese.

Yummy!
Tyler wouldn't let me eat in peace. He was trying to get a horrible picture of me mid chew... just to annoy me. Ha! Nice try buddy!

Our Tree...
You can see the few ornaments that we had already collected from our travels. There are the ones from Disneyland, a Beefeater from London, and a few from Switzerland even. It was a good little tree that served us well.

My First All by Myself Turkey
I just love food so much. I was proud of myself for making Christmas dinner all buy myself, so I took a picture. As you can see, our little kitchen was an absolute disaster in the background.

Buche de Noel
This is the traditional French Christmas dessert. They come in a million yummy flavors, but of course, we got the extra chocolate kind. Tyler would not stop calling it by its literal translation; he kept telling everyone that we were having "Christmas log" for dessert.