Champs Elysses Christmas Market

We woke up on Friday morning and knew the kids were in need of an outing after being at the apartment most of the day on Thursday.  We wanted to find a Christmas tree and some ornaments - so where do you head for inspiration..... the Champs Elysses Christmas Market, of course.  Amazing!!  The lower half of the street is lined with white wooden vendor houses full of gingerbread, hot chocolate, apple cider, vin chaud (spiced wine), the yummiest German sausage, chocolates, candies, and lots of decorations, toys, jewelry and carnival rides.  The kids rode multiple rides and had such a great time.  Their favorite was a tiny roller coaster in the middle of the market that they were able to ride multiple times due to being the only kids riding that time of day. 

A lot of the music played here is in English.  We could here Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby over the loud speakers singing "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."  So fun!  I've had a few giggles from listening to teenagers on the metro talking very swiftly in French and then all of a sudden break out into some pop song in English that they are listening to loudly in their earphones.

We mainly took in the sights & wonderful Christmas smells at the market.  Our biggest purchase was for sweet Halle.  Her boots & jeans got soaked in the playing at the market.  We found a vendor selling fleece socks and slippers.  She made it home in pink kitty cat socks and Aristocats slippers.  The man there was so helpful and was doting on her as she warmed her very chilly toes.  

At the end of the road, towards the Tuileries Gardens and Louvre was the La Grand Roue (the Giant ferris wheel) similar to the London Eye.  We hopped aboard for a double loop around to see the amazing view of Paris.  Beautiful!!  What an experience for everyone! 

After this, we headed to find a small Christmas tree for our apartment.  We were unsuccessful to find a fake one.  We found a few real ones, but due to allergies & asthma in our family, we needed a faux one.  We decided to head back to the apartment to warm up a bit and do a little bit more research as to where we could find a tree.

After an hour of defrosting, Chris and I headed out to find the BHV department store.  If ever in Paris - go! Its about 7 floors of everything!  One floor was like a Lowe's, another like Hobby Lobby, Nordstroms, .... you get the idea.  We found our 3 foot tree waiting on the top floor in the midst of the Christmas decorations.  A funny side note is they do not have Christmas hooks to hang the ornaments.  Chris and I had to go down to the basement floor (the hardware store) and ask around for anything they had.  We were showed metal rings, metal wire, and we ended up with a roll of green trash bag twist ties.  This ended up working great but I never realized how helpful the metal Christmas hooks were before then.

(Check out our sweet star on the top.  Katharine made it for us out of foil - I love it so much!! She also left us with goodies under the tree before she left on Wednesday)

We made our way through rush hour on the metro.  Literally bodies smashed up against each other and people getting fiesty over extra people trying to squeeze on the metro.  Add in a big box for our Christmas tree & we are making memory folks.  ;)  We made it home and Honey & Mimi had begun to make dinner for everyone.  3 cheers for that!  Thank you so much!  We ate dinner, put together the tree, the kid's watched Aristocats & we were able to watch some of my Uncle David's funeral via Skype and talk to some family members.