Joyeux Noel!

I'm back in England, having had an eventful Eurostar journey home which arrived an hour late and was delayed by "frozen doors" at Ebbsfleet International. 

I won't be blogging until January when I go back to France, so have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, wherever you are!

Neige

First of all sorry for not posting in a while; it's been quite manic lately leading up to the end of term on Friday.

OK, I said earlier that I would post when we had some snow in Paris.  We had a flurry on Saturday 4th December and a genuine blizzard on the following  Wednesday.  Coincidentally I was doing a class on Wednesday on snow when it began, and the lesson quickly turned to "describe what you see outside" as we stared out the window.

It was pleasing to learn that France is equally incapable of dealing with snow as the UK, with basically all buses cancelled that Wednesday and the Peripherique severely delayed.

Anyway, this photo is from the lighter snowfall on the Saturday at the Eiffel Tower.  I hadn't visited the Tower in a while, but I figured that it would make a nice wintry scene.  Et voilà:

Rue Mouffetard at Christmas

In the 5th arrondissement there is a famous road called Rue Mouffetard.  It's at the heart of the quartier; a cobbled street that's almost as old as the hill that it runs down.  It's crammed with traditional French bakers; butchers; restaurants and creperies, although shamefully I used to buy most of my food from the Franprix when I lived there! 

I was back there the other day and saw it was lit up for Christmas:

The Entrance to Rue Mouffetard

The lights in the street

I've seen a few other streets lit up- the most obvious one being the Champs Elysees which I posted about earlier, but the Rue Mouffetard is the most tastefully done. 


Today we had the heaviest snow I've seen this year.  Unfortunately I've had a cold lately so I decided not to venture out into the sub-zero streets to take photographs.  Still, I've got earlier snowy snaps on the way.  A plus.

Review of Reporters sans frontières exhibition in Paris Voice

The Petit Palais

Long-time readers of this blog (yes, there are thousands of you) may remember that I posted a while back on the exhibition of the photography of Pierre and Alexandra Boulat at the Petit Palais.

Well, I've written a review about that exhibition for Paris Voice.  It's an English online magazine about Paris.  It has news, film reviews, food critics, travel guides, photography reviews and more.  The editor kindly let me write a review for them.  You can find it here.

It snowed yesterday morning, and the snow settled for a few hours all over the city.  I'll have pictures up soon.  A plus.