Paris Moments: Photo of the Month, Notre-Dame in the Snow

Corey Frye, also known as “A French Frye in Paris,” spends much of his days pounding the cobblestones in Paris as he leads tours around the city. Along the way, he spots wonderful panoramas, cafés, historic sites, and more. These “Paris Moments” he shares with Bonjour Paris readers in a column featuring the Photo of the Month. (View past editions here.) Enjoy! On the rare occasion that a blanket of snow covers Paris, a sense of wonder and spectacle always arrives with it. Suddenly it’s an unknown version of a well-known city; inside all the pictures and postcards and paintings you’ve ever seen, very few present the City of Light as a City of White. It just doesn’t happen often enough. The statistics of last week’s storm prove the point: the most accumulation since 1987! Even the most stoic and hurried locals took a moment to stop and snap a photo. It was limestone beige and steeple gray against a milk-white backdrop – the same palette as a teaspoon in a café crème. There were snowball fights among the statues of the Luxembourg Gardens and skiers skimming down La Butte Montmartre. It was pretty grand and in a town famous for hosting historical events, any day you can live through one of them is a good day indeed. As usual the scene was fleeting and alas, that sensation of living inside an enormous Paris snow globe is now just a memory. Will it happen again before winter’s out? Will it take another 30 years? Either way I’ll be ready with camera and snowboard in hand. And probably one of those café crèmes for good measure.