Ice skating on an outdoor rink in winter… how romantic! Ice skating on a ice rink in Paris… perfect!
The Parisians really take their winter ice skating seriously and have great rinks dotted throughout Paris. The figurehead being the 1300m rink at the front of Hotel de Ville. Yeah there is the Rockerfeller Centre in New York, Somerset House in London, but in my humble opinion you can’t beat Hotel de Ville for wow factor. Also it has very tasteful but very sparkly lights for the festive season!
On rinks in other countries I have come across annoying prissy girls in ice skating skirts doing triple Axels or other twirly things in the middle of the rink. Have no fear.. this is not to be found in Paris… the rinks here have much more street cred. The rollerbladers who take over the streets every Friday night, take to the ice in the winter and seriously cut up the ice, flying around and doing all sorts of tricks! If you are a bit intimidated by the boys in the baggy jeans and hoodies they are great entertainment to watch from the spectator area all around the rink. There is no reason to be intimidated though, even though these are super cool edgy street boys (!) like the majority of French people they are uber polite, shouting back ‘excusez moi‘ when they cut you off and picking up kids from the ice as they swoop-by backwards!
The good thing all of this is free with just 5 euro for skate rental (if you don’t pack yours in your hand luggage!). Queues can be a bit long at busy times which is a bit of a pain in the current Paris cold weather, but school holidays are over now so things should quieten down. And then you are in such a great area you can take a walk to Notre Dame to stretch out those legs after all those fancy moves or just retreat to the Marais for a restorative Vin Chaud!
Ice rinks in Paris
Patinoire Hotel de Ville
20th Dec 2008 to 10 March 2009
Mon to Thurs – 12h – 22h
Fri 12pm-12am; Sat 9am-12am; Sun 9am-10pm
Metro: Hotel de Ville – Line 1
Patinoire Montparnasse
1 Dec 2008 – 10 Mar 2009
Mon-Fri 12pm-8pm; Sat & Sun 9am-8pm
Photo of ice rink in Paris, France, originally posted by Panoramas
One response to “Ice Skating in Paris”
Report an inappropriate commentSeptember 11th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
I am an ice-dancer, and I’m planning to visit my son in Paris (Arondisment 18) around Christmas time. I am looking for an ice-dance session, if such a thing exists there, I am a pre-Goldlevel dancer in the US, which means I have completed tests for the Preliminary, pre-Bronze, Bronze, pre-Silver, Silver Dances. I am an older adult, and prefer not to have small children skating recklessly around me.
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