It was about a month ago that the lights started going up, undeterred by a holiday in the latter part of November to get in the way of the Christmas festivities.

First it was the grand department stores. Dani and I went to gawk at the windows at le Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville (BHV) and later at le Bon Marché.

Around the same time, the lights went up on my street, because of course it wouldn’t be the holidays without the Eiffel Tower.

When my friend (and former husband) Dwain was visiting over Thanksgiving, on a lark we decided to check out the Christmas market at the Tuileries Gardens. So many sausages! So much tartiflette! We did share a sausage, which was delicious! I was a bit scared of the enormous pans of tartiflette, which if I remember correctly involves potatoes, cheese, cream, and bacon, so we didn’t try that.

And Dani and I also went to go see the light displays at the Domaine de Saint-Cloud, which were quite spectacular. We went a few days after the weather turned decidedly cold, so I had gone out to get a wool overcoat and was wearing that along with a wool jacket, a wool sweater, leather gloves, and two pairs of socks. Which pretty much worked to keep me from freezing until got to the very end. 🙂

And a couple weeks ago, I came down to the lobby to find the concierge putting up a Christmas tree, which lent a lovely bit of festiveness.

In other news, there’s a square a few blocks from my apartment called the Place de Catalogne that the city is working on transforming into an “urban forest.” I like to swing by there because there’s a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower (which is much better in person than in the photos, of course), and I also get to see what progress they’re making on the forest. And a week ago I discovered, in what had just been a big mound full of weeds, cranes lifting dormant trees into place. Very exciting!

I’ll be very interested to see next summer how the urban forest turns out!