It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

Oh wait, no, it's not. At all. Today was cloudy enough to be winter, but a cool 65-70 degrees probably isn't going to cut it. I'm not even kidding. We didn't even bring real jackets with us.

This morning Julien and I went grocery shopping together; I forgot how much better it is when you have company :) Anyway, I bought my first weird over-pasteurized milk ... you know, the ones that don't have to be in a refrigerator. I'll let you know how that works out. I've almost finished off my 750g jar of nutella [singlehandedly], but I'm trying to resist buying more of it for awhile. Then we made lunch and hung around watching TV for a bit, and I had my first Kinder Surprise (think Nestle chocolate ball that had a toy inside that I think I remember hearing had been banned recently or something).

Then Julien, Iris, Sydney and I went exploring. Not REALLY exploring, because we had a mission. We went to the Christmas market on the Champs Elysées, cut through the Tuileries, and then on to investigate the famous Christmas window dressings of the major department stores.

The first thing we found was cotton candy, aka, barbe-à-papa. I think Christmas market actually means candy festival. I haven't seen that much junk food in one place since the Fair. Iris was really excited, and demanded a pink one :)



Some smaller festival-ish rides ... There was also something that looked like it might have a Santa in it, but all I saw was pretend snow (felt spongey, which weirded me out) and pretend pine trees. I want REAL snow!!! This was fun, but slightly depressing ...



The markey stretched on and on. There was a whole ice sculpture exhibit, but it was 12 € to get in, and none of us are THAT diehard about big ice cubes.



Not sure this picture accurately conveys how huge this thing is ... no way was I getting on it. While they took their turn, I hung out in the Tuileries right behind it.



In the pond are tons of cymbals that look like lily pads. Everyone throws little rocks and tries to hit them, which is actually quite satisfying. Not unlike an enormous game of beer pong ... Yes, I really just made that analogy.



This is why I can't get into the Christmas spirit. Well, green leaves and the fact that I'm still waiting for Thanksgiving.



After cutting through the Tuileries and weaving back through streets I can't remember, we ended up near all of the grands magasins ... think of 5th Ave in NYC. I think this was one of the windows from Printemps? I wish this could show you, but everything was moving in these shop windows ... like little marionnettes. It was really cool!



Just pretty... Star Wars headdress, and a Russian egg base.



Wicked intense cloth horse, and two dresses that I can't even begin to describe.



After Printemps, we started off at Galeries LaFayette. This is the Galeries LaFayette across the street, it was really pretty.



Like a Teddy Bear Tea ... they were adorable!



Meg, Gennie, I'm pretty sure the little babies in this window were sisters of Sissy/Little Sissy, Snowflake, Sparkle and Ellen. If you look closely, they have really similar faces ... the Sissy smile even!



Enormous fountain filled with stuffed animals that were swimming around and such ... pretty awesome, really.



I took tons more pictures, but they're not THAT exciting, so this gives you an idea. It was mobbed, but it was fun to check all of it out!