Christmas Day in the City of Light. Here's how we spent the holiday.Almost everything is closed on Christmas Day. The metro stops running early on Christmas Eve and doesn’t run on Christmas Day. Majority of the museums and monuments are closed. Many family owned restaurants, bakeries, and cafés don’t open so their employees can spend the day with their families. With that in mind, we decided to sleep in and spend Christmas Morning in the house at our leisure. Along with all of our goodies (ahead of time, we purchased some nougat, macarons, and Christmas chocolates), Chase created a charcuterie board for us. We used some cheese we bought at the Christmas markets and we also made a run to the grocery store down the street (we planned for everything to be closed so we bought groceries on Dec. 23rd). We get some jam, smoked meats, butter (oh, French butter is TO. DIE, FOR!), and some sparkling water. You know, the essentials! We also had one of the city's best boulangeries right next to our apartment so we picked up some bread and almond croissants for Christmas Morning. We did manage to find one of our “must try this restaurant” spots taking reservations on Christmas Day. We decided to make it for the early afternoon, that way we could get ready without rushing around, order an über and head to the 4th Arr. to dine at Chez Julien. Chez Julien has been featured in countless movies and shows, plus it's a favorite around the food blogs. The interior was filled with mirrors reflecting the natural light from the windows. We were seated in a corner booth and could see the entire main dining room. It felt like we were eating at someone's home, hence the name (Chez meaning house or home of)! We only snapped photos of the main course and dessert, the best part! I went with the traditional French Christmas dinner dish, Chateaubriand and Chase got braised lamb shank. For dessert, we had a chocolate mouse cake and a lemon tart with meringue dollops. Everything was divine. We would highly recommend Chez Julien for a Paris night out! We said our goodbyes to the waitstaff and headed outside. We walked along the Seine and made our way to Notre Dame. The streets were so empty, it felt like no one was around, well except for Julia Styles! We passed her and her fiancé on Rue de Ravoli! What is life?! We had fully planned on going inside Notre-Dame and seeing it again, this time during the day, but the crowds were enormous! We had found the people and we were over it! So we snapped a few pictures from the outside and high tailed it to Place des Vosges. If you go to Paris, don’t skip this square. It’s picture perfect Paris! Place Dauphine was next on our list. We intentionally planned to do a lot of walking to parks and squares on Christmas Day because we knew nothing else would be open. It was a very quite, calm day in the city. To our surprise, they had these cute Christmas trees decorated in blue and silver so we decided to take a couple pictures of each other. A nice man took a picture of us together (the cover photo) and it might be my favorite of the whole trip. Our last stop before the sun went down was to the lock bridge and over to where they are now housing the locks (right outside Place Dauphine). We added a shiny gold piece to the railing and headed back to the apartment as the night drew on. It was a unique experience being in Paris for Christmas. We missed our families and our normal traditions but it was a Christmas for the books and memories Chase and I recall upon frequently! Merry Christmas, everyone!
Until Next Time, C + D
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1/9/2023 11:14:35 am
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