Xmas in Paris may not be snowy white, but it’s difficult to not be full with christmas cheer if you’re in Paris in December. The City of Lights lives up to its title in a huge method, as the trees that surround the Champs-Elysées are among the various plants in Paris that get covered with strings of light, and the Eiffel Tower often gets the central spot of the nighttime skyline with its gleaming light.
In fact, viewing the christmas lights in Paris is one of the top things to do when you’re checking out the city in December. The top places to go to explore the Paris christmas lights are along the aforementioned Champs-Elysées, along the Rue Montorgueil and Rue Mouffetard, in the Place Vendome, in the windows of the large department stores (as well as the famous Galeries Lafayette), and at the Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s at Notre Dame that you’ll also get to check out Paris’ Christmas tree, and even if you’re not a spiritual person you could do worse than to go to a Christmas Eve ritual in the well-known church. You can reach all of these sights from Appartment in Paris
A different Christmas custom in Paris is the temporary ice skating rinks that get set up throughout the city. The locations every year might differ, 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 Montparnasse. They are likely to go up in mid-December and stay open through March, so even if you’re checking out Paris past Xmas you can however take a turn. 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 ritual in one of Paris’ various churches can be a really amazing mode to spend Christmas Eve, even if you’re not a super-spiritual person at home. And you don’t even have to be fluent in French to get the most out of a mass – there are quite a lot of English-language ceremonies throughout the city you can join in. Unfortunately, the website for the Catholic churches of Paris appears to be entirely in French – so you may call for some help from a French-speaking buddy to translate it and locate the English ceremonies, or you can just ask the Paris tourism office or in your Hotel in Paris when you arrive in the city. Additionally to attending Christmas mass in Paris’ churches, you may additionally desire to do a visit of the churches during non-service times in order to visit the many nativity scenes they’ve erected for the season.
Xmas in Paris, as well as the rest of France, tends to be a family holiday – which means that rather than dining out and partying with friends, Parisians are more likely to be having large meals in comfortable apartments with family and partying in private. Still, for a tourist, Paris at Christmastime can still be dreamlike – there’s a sense of silence that you may not discover in Paris at any other time of year (even if don’t imagine the streets will be cast off or something), and there’s something about the mode a city feels when it’s preparing for a family holiday that makes it feel cozy… No matter what the temperature is outside.
