Freezing cold in Vitry!

Winter arrived late but brutally... temperatures are way below zero here south of Paris, we're getting -6 or so. Last night we had a few snow flakes and I decided to take a small walk to the park behind our house. I'll admit it was quite difficult to take my gloves off in order to take a few pictures... It's rare that the pond would freeze that much... it maybe happened once in ten years!

just an old photo to see what it will look like this summer...

Town Parade... Fête des Lilas...

This town festival a big thing for us. The Saturday night concert in Frédéric Joliot Curie park and the fireworks, stands for kiddies in Coteau Park, different sports events, animation in town shops during the week preceding the festival. And we end it all with a parade... we have people coming from all over France and sometimes Europe. We also had the signing of books on Street Art by various artists, including Christian Gemy alias C 2015 who has various artwork throughout Vitry.

Vitry town festival turns 50!

For our 50th edition of the Fete des Lilas, our sister town Burnley offered an art work to Vitry "The Water Stars". Here's a few pictures...

Fete des Lilas... stands, food, swan...

During our annual festival, it's time to get together, see what's going on in Vitry and find information about the numerous local organisations. This "village des associations" takes place in our Parc Joliot Curie. So here is a shot of our swan family with baby swans... and photos of the various stands. There were also 2 podiums where music and dance representations took place throughout the day. You can see some people dancing in the following pictures.

Some dancing...

This is the town stand. Some years they focus on recycling which I find great. So this year it was about the 50th anniversary of the Fête des Lilas.

From time to time the wind would change and the people on the lawn would receive all the smoke coming from the food stands!!!

Swan family :)

Afficher Street Art à Vitry sur une carte plus grande

Fete des Lilas, town festival

I'm going through my photos and can finally put some of them online. They are from last Sunday (May 29) from the town festival, La Fête des Lilas, in Vitry where we live. One interesting part of it is of course the food stands. This year we had Brazilian food - I had beef brochette with chips and my husband had chicken brochette which consisted of 3 chicken wings on a skewer. The young ones went for chicken pie and some beef fritters. I found my beef brochette to taste good... For dessert we had some Mont Blanc cake and coconut ice cream from the Martinique stand... Nice picnic under the sun, perfect Sunday afternoon indeed!

I forgot to mention the churros from Spanish stand which came in a paper cone with the American flag and an Indian headdress ... My dessert photos aren't very good as we were eating while we strolled around... The Mont Blanc cake is a sort of sponge cake with grated coconut on top and coconut cream in between the layers. It tasted good. I brought some home for my tea. Last year we ate the Bokit, a fried bread filled with meat and vegetables from the Martinique stand.

Vitry famous for its street art, come visit!

I wanted to point out an article on Le Parisien Val de Marne on my town Vitry as a renowned street art town...

Article Here...

In brief, you will see in Vitry more than 400 paintings, from around 50 artists who come from all over Europe to paint in Vitry and even from South America... Aren't we a privileged bunch of people here?

I'm on my way to the town's annual Lilac Festival - yesterday we had Michel Fugain, French singer, who gave a concert in the park behind my house and the night ended by fabulous fireworks...  Today we have local organisations in the park showcasing their work and selling stuff and food to fund their activities. It's a great way to see what's going on in different areas of the town - helping the poor, dance or music activities, sewing, children's activities etc. etc. It all ends by a parade in the afternoon... that will be in another post!

Poppy field

The sun is out, time for a walk...
This photo is from last summer... our poppy flowers are not out yet! Which reminds me of Claude Monet and his poppy field in Giverny...

Pre-primary school carnival

This weekend I was surprised to see the pre primary school carnival passing just down my road. Here are a few photos taken from my apartment on the 6th floor.