We show you the new improved Champs Elysees lights, the famous animated Xmas window displays at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, and a special – magical – lightshow…


Yesterday, 26th November 2007, Betrand Delanoë (mayor of Paris) turned on the Paris Christmas lights, and we were eager to take a look. This year the standard lights on the Champs Elysees have been changed for low energy-consumption bulbs, meaning that there can be more of them, and that they now twinkle and move!

Trying to take a decent photo turned out to be difficult. We didn’t have a tripod, and soon realised that the Champs Elysees is not only the most beautiful avenue in the world, but one of the busiest too! Such a lot of traffic… Check out our little film…

You can check out the rest of the photos here.

We then moved on to have a look at the Grands Magasins, meaning Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. They always have animated window displays with special little steps so kids can get up close and giggle. Once again – in our opinion – Printemps did better than Galeries Lafayette. The Printemps’ windows were generally funnier, although they had a white theme, compared to Galeries Lafayette’s very colourful displays.

We especially liked this one with a wolf preying on reindeer…

Also, the Printemps had a special lightshow with music that ran every ten minutes along the whole of the façade. It sounded like Björk crossed with Philip Glass, and we found it really enchanting…

Galeries Lafayette’s windows all had the names of their sponsors on them, which is a bit tacky, but certain displays were really good, strange even. Check this out…

The dolls on the right flew round and round. I think their window dresser may be on drugs… Anyway, you can check out all the photo on Flickr here. If you are going to be in Paris for the holiday season, we think you should definitely have a walk round the city at night. Even after having lived here for so many years, we still find it quite magical.