Marché de Noël

For the fifth year in a row, my best-laid plans to go to Strasbourg were foiled. I swear I will make it there some day! Knowing that, I decided to visit the marché de noël at La Défense after hearing that it was the largest Christmas market in the metro area. It was my first visit out to La Défense - I'd been wanting to go check it out since this summer, but was always too lazy to buy an extra ticket out to zone 3. However thanks to Karina, I found out that if you take line 1 out there, you can just use your regular zone 1-2 ticket roundtrip (but you do need a zone 1-3 ticket if you take the RER - who knew?). So guess who will be making another trip out there in the near future to check out the shopping mall...
The market itself was a bit disappointing though - the decorations were great, but 90% of the stands had nothing to do with Christmas. Just the regular knick-knacks that you find at any other market, though there seemed to be some kind of rule that your stand had to say "magique" some where on it if you wanted to participate. We saw magic wallets, magic hats, magic toys - the list went on and on.The only Christmas-related stand there:
But who cares, when you've got vin chaud and gooey raclette cheese to keep you warm right??