Christmas Day

Christmas day we took a walk along the Siene. We had lunch at a cafe, stopped by Shakespeare and Company (which was very crowded) and went to Notre Dame. Julien brought along his new appaloosa.

Christmas Morning!

Christmas morning Julien crawled into bed with us and we sang songs and told stories while we waited for everyone to wake up. It was one of my favorite moments of the day. The night before we set out our shoes instead of stockings, which is supposedly what the French do. Julien was very insistent about this. I think he thought that since we were in France if we did not follow French customs Pere Noel would not come. Last year Julien did not believe in Pere Noel/Santa, this year he did. We even set out milk and cookies.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we did our last minute Christmas shopping, mostly in the Saint Germain area. My best find was a cool little papeterie where Julien and I found lots of small presents for people, including a modernist pocket ashtray Julien picked out for his grandad Rick as well as a mirror and measuring tape for Grandmum.

That evening we went out for a stroll down Champs Elysee. It was very fun, everything was open late and the streets were packed full of pedestrians. We even saw Pere Noel speeding down the street with a motorcade! For the full effect we walked down to the Arc de Triomphe before heading home for dinner .

By the way, the horse in the photo was named (at least temporarily) Clown Metro.

Au Bon Marche

I meant to post these photos with an earlier post (Musee D'Orsay). The window display at Au Bon Marche was very whimsical and the kids loved it! Julien laughed and laughed.

Cirque D'Hiver

The Cirque D'Hiver was right around the corner from where we were staying and we were finally able to convince Julien to go after our trip to Musee D'Orsay (I think he was worried about the circus because of Dumbo). It was fabulous! Very French! Great music and ambiance. They had a tiger, horses, camels, and dogs and the clowns were traditional French harlequins. Of course Julien loved it!

The Local Market

We had a local market that was open twice a week where we found wonderful meat, cheeses, olives, bread and produce. It made us happy to have a kitchen! Unfortunately, since I was pregnant I was not supposed to eat pasturized cheeses, but we were able to find a few that I could eat.

Musee D'Orsay

We had one day that we did not hang out with Kathy and Rick. They went Christmas shopping while we went to the Musee D'Orsay. It was wonderful and Julien enjoyed it more than I expected. He loved looking at the paintings and sculptures, especially of recognizable subjects. His favorite was probably Seurat's Circus. After seeing that painting Julien finally agreed that he would like to go to the circus (which we did a couple nights later). After the museum we went to the Marais district where Julien rode another carousel, this time a motor cycle. We went to L'As du Falafel (a recommendation from Jan) which was really great. Even Julien loved his falafel! It was very crowded and Chic in a very international way. We then went to the Bon Marche and looked at the charming window displays. One little girl kept talking to Julien in French, but Julien, not understanding what she was saying, just stared at her a smiled.

Carousel

We decided to have a relatively laid back day after our London excursion, so we went the Saint Germain area to do some Christmas shopping and went out for a nice lunch. We tried to go ice skating at Hotel de Ville, but it was too crowded, so Julien rode the carousel twice. It was the fastest carousel I'd ever seen! We ended up with an evening walk by Notre Dame and a nice stop at a little cafe.