until next time...

Well, Sunday evening (so long ago!) we all headed out to Disneyland Paris on the train, to get there in time to be ready for a full day on Monday in the parks. Sunday was a very, very long day for us, but we did make it out to Disney alright. In the morning we finally did the Louvre, which I had been very excited for. We arrived early, since we knew it would be crowded, and when we got there it was pretty empty. We thought we might have time for other activities in the afternoon, but I was glad that my mom and brother were interested enough that we stayed for about 5 hours. We saw a ton! We visited the Italian Renaissance rooms first, so y brother could see the Mona Lisa. Even that early, it was still really insanely crowded. Next we went to see the Roman and Greek statues, and ended up also visiting the wing with their Egyptian collection as well. After that we wandered through the French Renaissance works, the Medieval sculpture rooms, some French Baroque and Romantic paintings, and the somewhat newly excavated dungeon and Medieval fortress that was the original Louvre, with a short lunch break in there somewhere. I think by the end, we were all struggling up the staircases a bit.

The ride to Disney didn't exactly go as smoothly as we had hoped. They closed the train we wanted at the station where we were staying, so we had to take a detour on a smaller Metro line at a smaller station. Unfortunately, the French don't believe in escalators or wide stairwells, so I had some trouble with my suitcase. One wheel got bent at some point on my last hotel-switching adventure, and we couldn't fix it, but we did buy a pull-cart to attach it to. This, however, made the suitcase too big to fit through the turnstiles in the Metro, and too clumsy to carry up stairs. We ended up taking about twice the time to get out to our stop than we had anticipated, so it's a good thing we didn't have any plans for the night.

Once we got out to Disney and checked into the hotel, we stopped by the park in the late evening to grab some dinner and scope out the new geography of the place. It was weird how familiar but totally different this park is from the Florida Magic Kingdom. We also saw the evening parade, which was a lot of fun. Our hotel was a short bus ride away from the parks, and there was a free shuttle going all day. The hotel was Wild West themed, and had some really cute decor, like a red bandanna-print curtain. The one downside: no air conditioning! Thankfully, while we were there it didn't really get too hot.

On Monday, we used our privilege as guests at a Disney hotel to get into the park two hours early. When we got in Main Street was almost empty, and the whole park was like a ghost town. It was so odd compared to our usual experience! We rode the Buzz Lightyear ride a whole bunch of times, which was a total blast! We did the other rides that were open before the official park opening at 10, and then we rushed over to Thunder Mountain Railroad when the rest of the rides opened. I hadn't even considered that the ride would be that different, and I got on automatically. The entire ride I was screaming my head off, terrified to death. It is SO much scarier than the Florida version, and half the ride is in total darkness! Eek, not an experience I would do again, but my family loved it. They even bought the picture they take on the ride because I look pretty amusing. We spent the rest of the day in the park, with a short afternoon break and nap.

The second, and last, full day we went to the Studios park, which is much more shows than rides. Both parks are both very clearly European in their food choices and certain attractions, and we definitely saw this in the Studios. We saw a show that was not copied from any other Disney park and it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen, with no plot and odd songs. On the other hand, the Paris version of the Great Movie Ride, which is a personal favorite of mine in DisneyWorld, was changed from a ride to a show and was fabulous! It made fun of annoying American tourists, too, so my mother and I were in hysterics the whole time. In the afternoon after lunch, we shopped for a while and also went to see Toy Story 3 in the AMC just outside the park. The movie was of course in French, but it still made me sob. Have I mentioned that I love Pixar?

That night we saw the Electromagic parade at the Disneyland park and the ensuing firework show. We had the best spot in the whole park to watch them, and they were definitely up to the standard we've seen in other Disney parks. The new Disney was really fun, and we are already planning another hypothetical trip so we can get to know the parks as well as the Florida ones! We really had a blast, and it was a nice change from the intense intellectual stuff we were doing in Paris. Just a good time, good food, and familiar fun.

The next morning we had our last French breakfast, complete with plain yogurt and chocolate croissants, packed up, and left for the airport. We had pretty unremarkable flights back, thank goodness, although our connection at Dublin was pretty tight because of a number of airline holdups. Everything went fine, and we got all of our baggage and found my dad easily. He was so sweet, and picked us up and had a rose for me! :) I'm still a little messed up with the jet lag, but it's not nearly as bad I expected it to be. It felt so good to sleep in my own bed again! It was an absolutely amazing trip, but I'm glad to be home. We'll see how long that lasts...I will miss the French diet, that's for sure.

Anyway, I think this will probably by my last post about Paris, so thank you everybody for reading and keeping up with me and my crazy adventures! And thanks for the comments! Hope to see everyone soon, now that I'm back. If you'd like to see more photos of the trip than I posted here, I will post a link on here to Flickr when I upload all the photos there.

So, I guess until my next trip to Paris, au revoir!