A Snowy Day in Paris

Jardin des Plantes

It’s been cold here this month.  We had made it until January without the temperatures dropping much below 40 degrees, but are now in the middle of a stretch of cold, gray days.  It even snowed last weekend!  The hardest part for me isn’t the rain, the snow or the cold, it is that the sun doesn’t rise until well after 8 am for much of the winter.  I thought I would share a few pictures I took over the summer on a walk through the Jardin des Plantes as a reminder that things won’t always be so cold and gray here in Paris.

The Jardin des Plantes is a botanical garden in the 5th arrondissement that was established in 1626 as a royal medicinal herb garden by Louis XIII’s personal physicians.  It was opened to the public in 1640 and was expanded in the 18th century under the direction of Louis Leclerc, a French naturalist.

Today the grounds of the Jardin des Plantes house a zoo, several museums, and a number of gardens including the gardens of the École de Botanique (Botany School), a rose garden, an alpine garden, and a winter garden in an Art Deco greenhouse.  Like on the Coulée Verte, the flowers blooming in the Jardin des Plantes change throughout the seasons so there is always something new to see.

Alpine garden:

 

Rose garden:

Winter garden:

Galette des Rois

We missed out on getting a bûche de noël by spending Christmas away from Paris, but we were back in time to try a galette des rois (king cake) for Epiphany.  King cakes are a traditional part of the feast of Epiphany in a number of countries (including parts of the U.S.) but the type of cake varies by region and country.

In the part of France where we live, a galette des rois is a flat tart made of puff pastry with almond paste filling.  A fève (bean) is buried in the cake.  While the fève was originally an actual bean, it is represented by a little ceramic trinket in modern galettes des rois.  The person who discovers the fève in their slice of cake is the king of the feast and gets to wear the paper crown that comes with the cake.

Our second Christmas Eve

It feels like I discover something I haven't noticed before around every corner in Paris. Most of the time, my “discoveries” are probably only of interest to me, but occasionally I have a find I want to share with J.  I arrived a little early to meet a friend for lunch in the Place du Trocadero one day last fall (I know my parents probably think that the fact that I was early for something is the real discovery here) and I used my extra time to explore the area.  When I reached the terrace between the buildings of the Palais de Chaillot, I found an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower. 

I brought J up to the Trocadero to check it out months later on a day when we found ourselves in a nearby neighborhood of the 16th arrondissement.  The terrace was choked with people and we could see the area around the Eiffel Tower was even more crowded.  We quickly left and decided to return during the January/February lull in tourism.

We were back in the area to visit the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine the first Sunday in January when we noticed a group of people in costume headed out to the terrace.  We put off entering the museum in favor of following the group to see what was going on.  They were dressed as a live nativity scene and the woman in charge was passing out blue and yellow scarves and sheets of lyrics to some of the bystanders.  J noticed one of the members of the group carrying a Ukrainian flag and we realized that we had stumbled into an Orthodox Christmas Eve celebration.

The people in costume started singing and we stayed for a while to enjoy the music.  We laughed when we eventually headed into the museum because you really never know what you are going to run across wandering around the city.

Christmas in Barcelona

This year we decided to spend Christmas away from Paris.  We wanted to go somewhere that would be easy and relaxing, and (preferably) warmer.  Barcelona seemed like the perfect choice because we have been there several times and know our way around the city pretty well.  We are at least vaguely familiar with Spanish, love Spanish food and wine, and it is typically around 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than Paris in late December. One thing we did not consider when choosing our destination was how Christmas would be celebrated in that city.  After our trip was booked I stumbled across an old article on celebrating the holidays in Barcelona and we realized that we might be in for some uniquely Catalan fun.

One thing we both love about Barcelona (and Paris) is the practice of stringing Christmas lights across the narrow streets.  We were staying in an older part of town and almost every street was decorated.  Each neighborhood had their own distinctive lights: we always knew we were in our little part of the city when the streets were filled with triangles and stars.

 

There was a large Christmas market set up outside of the cathedral in the city's Gothic quarter called the Santa Llùcia market.  It was different than some of the other such markets we’ve seen in that it seemed to sell mostly Christmas decorations rather than souvenirs, churros, and other random non-holiday-related items.  The market had rows of stalls selling greenery, nativity scenes, poinsettias, and a lot of Tiós de Nadal.  The Tió de Nadal is an anthropomorphized log that “generates” small gifts in a rather unusual way upon being beaten with sticks.  There was a communal Tió de Nadal near to the Santa Llùcia market; children could go up and hit it with a stick to receive a piece of candy.

We skipped a few of the holiday activities (like ice skating at the huge temporary rink set up in the Plaça de Catalunya) but there was one I didn’t want to miss.  On Christmas morning I woke J up and dragged him out to the water’s edge to see the Copa de Nadal, an annual swimming race that takes place in Barcelona's harbor.  

There were several heats and participants were split up based on age and membership in Masters swimming groups.  The swimmers were loaded onto a large, flat boat that was navigated to a position 200 meters from the shore.  They jumped and dove off the boat, then swam through the chilly waters of the Mediterranean Sea to the shore.

Boats with emergency personnel followed the swimmers in case anyone had trouble during the race but we only saw a few people pulled out of the water.  Some of the swimmers were wearing Santa hats, carrying the flag of Catalonia, or even wearing full Santa suits and pulling sacks of what looked like presents through the water after them.

The end of the race course was a set of stairs out of the water that was only wide enough for one person at a time.  I felt bad for the swimmers who had to wait to climb the stairs and get out of the cold water, but upon exiting they did each get to triumphantly shake hands with what appeared to be a giant drop of water.

Celebrating the holidays an ocean away from most of our relatives and friends is very different than what J and I are used to, but sipping cava on the beach in sunny, 60-degree weather turned out to be a great way to spend a Christmas afternoon.

Mont d'Or

When I was passing through the market or picking something up at the fromagerie recently, I noticed a new cheese called Mont d’Or and sold in a little round wooden box.  There are other cheese that are sold in similar boxes, like Camembert, but this cheese had an uneven surface and looked a little different.  I was intrigued but didn’t try it out until I saw an article with a recipe for serving the cheese warmed, almost like a fondue.

Mont d’Or is a cheese from the Jura region of France.  During the summer, the cows graze on pastures in the mountains and their milk is used to make Comté (a very popular cheese here in France).  When the temperature drops, the cows are brought back into the stables for shelter and the change in their diet (to cold weather grasses and grain) is reflected in the milk they produce.  The farmers use this winter milk to make a soft, unpasteurized cheese with a thick wavy rind.

The cheese is sold in pine boxes of different sizes, which can be baked to melt the cheese and create a very special winter treat.  I wrapped the box in aluminum foil, poked holes in the rind, then pushed halved garlic cloves into the holes.  I then poured a little white wine over the top, put the lid back on the box, and baked it in the oven until the cheese was fully melted.

We dipped bread into the melted cheese and spooned it over boiled potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, and a little charcuterie.  It was mild, nutty and slightly infused with the aroma of pine from the box.  We had our cheese with a white wine from the region and it all combined to be a delicious dinner on a cold night.