Christmas in Paris

Is anything, any museums,restuarants, shops, etc. on Christmas or Boxing Day? I just want to know if it%26#39;s a good idea to travel to Paris during Christmastime.

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we did Christmas/New Years in Paris one year with our family and it was terrific -- it is a great holiday city -- the take out shops are full of fancy holiday dishes and desserts -- the city is bright and festive

and unlike London, everything doesn%26#39;t seem to shut down on Christmas (and so far as I could tell, they don%26#39;t celebrate boxing day)

we had an apartment, so I am not certain about restaurants -- but I seem to recall seeing some open

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We were in Paris for Christmas in 2004 and really enjoyed it. Even on Christmas day, a lot of restaurants and cafes were open (we were very surprised, had assumed things would all be shut down). We had breakfast out, and then walked around and took in free musical performances at a couple of churches. Not sure about museums (doubt they were open on Christmas day, but otherwise I think normal schedules prevailed).

Also fun -- all the churches have nativity scenes set up; some appear to be done professionally, but many clearly are done by children and really cute. On Christmas Eve, on a whim we walked over to Notre Dame and were there for the midnight service (long line to get in, because of security, and very crowded but still -- how often do you get a chance to do something like that??

Christmas in Paris struck as as much more lowkey that in the US (which was nice), not nearly as commercialized. We even had a tree (very small, artificial, fibre optic lights) in our flat (just left it there when we checked out, of course). And best of all -- very few tourists, except that between Christmas and New Years there were a lot of other Europeans.

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the last note reminded me of our tree adventures -- we had a small cut tree -- but a few days after Christmas when it was time to get rid of it we couldn%26#39;t figure out what to do with it -- my son went out with the tree and later came back without it --

he later showed us how he had disposed of it -- he wandered around until he saw a similar tree left in an alley (standing on its board feet), so he put ours next to it -- the next day there were a dozen trees all standing there in that alley

I felt guilty about it -- but figured the garbage collectors would probably deal with it -- we never did see any sign of what we were supposed to have done

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