Baby, It's Cold Outside

Yesterday brought the first sunny day in Paris in quite a while.  (I would have said two months, which I'm sure is an exaggeration, but not much of one.). The sun was bright and it warmed the atmosphere enough that many outdoor cafe tables were full in the afternoon of people basking in the sun with a cocktail or beer.  

We woke up this morning to yet another seemingly sunny day, and Glenn and I decided to take advantage by heading out to a marche aux puces, or flea market, on the periphery of Paris.  A northerly wind kicked up, and high, wispy clouds kept the sun at bay most of the morning.  So, instead of the unseasonable warmth of yesterday, we had a seasonably raw and cold several hours outdoors.  So I am writing this post as I sit under the covers of my bed at 3pm in the afternoon, trying to shake the chill from this morning.

And the topic is polar bears.

A friend from my (US-based) exercise class, Deb, asked me the other day whether the Christmas decorations on the businesses, public buildings, and homes in Paris seemed different than those in the US in any particular ways.  I struggled to come up with any answers at that moment.  Afterwards, I thought, perhaps, that my Christmas decorations always have had a European sensibility, I suppose, and so to me nothing seemed particularly different here.  (My father traveled to Europe for work with some regularity when I was a child, and he brought back Christmas puddings from London, chocolates from Paris, hand-carved figurines from Germany, nativity scenes from Italy, and so forth.  So none of these things seemed unusual.)

Then it occurred to me that I had seen several polar bears adorning businesses.  Above is a photo of a North Pole scene at an insurance agency, I think.  Christmas tableux of the North Pole would not be unheard of in the US, of course, but maybe it would be a little unusual to include the bears.

Here are some other polar bears ready to pounce on customers of a brasserie near our old apartment in Odeon.  They do not seem interested in the bear-sized gingerbread man between them, though.  It's difficult to tell from the photo, but down at street level is a repurposed seat from a ski lift surrounded by pine trees where customers can sit.  

So, I guess I would say that it's a sort of German-pastry-meets-ski-chalet-meets-Bears-from-the-North-Pole type of decorating scheme.

And, finally, picking up the ski chalet part of that, here is a window of a clothing store on Boulevard Saint Michel.  These dogs are definitely ready for the slopes, if not the North Pole.  And they probably would have been just fine at the flea market this morning, too.