It's been a long time, but it appears that we are having a real winter for the first time in about 5 years. It was -5°C in Paris this afternoon, and tonight it will go down to -8°C and maybe stay there. We got a dusting of snow a day earlier, so there is still snow on the roofs, in the parks and along the train tracks. Plenty of icy patches on the sidewalks, which makes walking tricky.

The Eiffel Tower is closed due to the temperature.

Tomorrow it will snow on the Côte d'Azur. You may see pictures on the news of snow on the palm trees. The freeze covers all of France including Corsica so I hope that any visitors are well equipped.

See for yourself via the various webcams at
www.paris-live.com

We're enjoying a real winter here in the Netherlands too. Lots of skaters out on the lakes and canals.
It was -5C all day and -9C last night here though it was -18 down in Limburg, but they had lots of snow too, which we thankfully haven't had.
Supposed to be even colder tonight.
As long as the snow stays away I am happy

Mid-December in the Grasse area felt very much like winter too--it was just plain cold. The mountains up around Sospel had snow the days before our arrival, and a fair amount was still on the ground.

I was noticing the Paris temps this afternoon showed to be 17F. Brrr, that's cold in any language.