The best christmas place in Paris
Christmas in the french capital may not be snowy white, but it’s difficult to not be filled with xmas joyfulness if you’re in the french capital in December. The City of Lights lives up to its nickname in a huge way, as the trees that contour the Champs-Elysées are surrounded by the various plants in Paris that get covered with strings of light, and the Eiffel Tower regularly becomes the focal point of the nocturnal skyline with its gleaming light.
In fact, looking at the xmas lights in Paris is one of the top things to do when you’re visiting the town in December. The greatest places to go to have a look at the Paris xmas lights are alongside the aforesaid Champs-Elysées, along the Rue Montorgueil and Rue Mouffetard, in the Place Vendome, in the windows of the large department stores (including the renowned Galeries Lafayette), and at the Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s at Notre Dame that you’ll also get to take a look at Paris’ Christmas tree, and even if you’re not a spiritual personality you might do worse than to go to a Christmas Eve ceremony in the well-known church. You can reach all of these sights from Appartment in Paris
A further Christmas custom in Paris is the temporary ice skating rinks that get set up all over the town. The locations each year might change, but there are frequently rinks put up in the open area close to the Paris City Hall, also known as the Hotel de Ville, and close to Montparnasse. They are likely to go up in mid-December and stay open over March, so even if you’re visiting the french capital past Xmas you can however take a spin. Generally speaking, to go ice skating in Paris on these temporary rinks won’t cost you anything, but if you must hire the ice skates that’ll be some euro.
Attending a ceremony in one of Paris’ various churches can be a really wonderful method to spend Christmas Eve, even if you’re not a super-spiritual personality at home. And you don’t even have to talk French to get the most out of a ceremony – there are several English-language services all over the town you can take part in. Unluckily, the homepage for the Catholic churches of Paris appears to be entirely in French – so you may require some assistance from a French-speaking friend to translate it and locate the English services, or you can simply ask the Paris tourism office or in your Hotel in Paris when you arrive in the town. In addition to attending Christmas mass in Paris’ churches, you may furthermore want to do a expedition|visit} of the churches during non-service times in order to see the many nativity scenes they’ve erected for the time of year.
Xmas in the french capital, as well as the rest of France, tends to be a family celebration – which means that rather than dining out and celebrations with friends, Parisians are more likely to be having large meals in comfortable apartments with family and partying in private. Nevertheless, for a tourist, the french capital at Christmastime can even now be dreamlike – there’s a sense of calm that you may not discover in Paris at any other time of year (although don’t assume the streets will be abandoned or anything), and there’s something about the manner a town feels when it’s preparing for a family celebration that lets it feel warm… No matter what the temperature is outside.
