Disney Heaven

When Mike first asked me if I wanted to go with him to Paris in the spring, I answered, "Sure, as long as we can go to EuroDisney." And he faithfully kept his promise. Today was my day at Disneyland Paris. It was a bit tricky getting our tickets, but the station agent at our favorite booth at San Michel was very helpful. The train ride was uneventful, and we really didn't notice more and more people getting on as we neared the Park. But when we got off the train, there was a nice, but not overwhelming crowd along with us.
I have to say, Euro Disney is prettier than Disneyland or Disney World. It has a more delicate, fairytale like air to it than the others I have been to. Very pretty. We did not get a park hopper pass. WIth one day, we only concentrated on the main park.
I got my wish and the first ride we went on was The Haunted Mansion. It never had a huge crowd, but the second time we went on there was a bit of a line. This is a pavillion in the entrance to the ride. It seems like here they were able to really create full blown stories to go along with certain key rides in the park.
We also went on Pirates. How could I not! It has a huge pirate ship parked in front of it and a skull rock and the whole ride is inside an old rocky fortress.
Mike needed a ride after all of that.


Space Mountain was fantastic. It was alot of fun getting shot out of the beginning of the ride and then descending into the traditional darkness. The ride seemed much faster than the other two I have been on - and I confirmed that on my trip to California ith Krista in July.
These are the adorable Australian Catholic school girls that we befriended during our wait for the ride. They were calling out for someone who spoke English who could tell them about the ride. So, we managed to keep them talking long enough to get them on the ride. They were, of course, terrified and screaming the entire time. But when they exited, they wanted to go back on right away.
Alice in Wonderland doesn't have a ride; instead she has a labyrinth - which makes sense, too.
Sleeping Beauty's castle is much prettier than the original. What's really is cool is that when you climb the stairs, you actually get to go out on the battlements and view the crowd below.


The Indiana Jones ride (Temple de Peril) is an outdoor roller coaster. Big Thunder Mountain was busier; I'm not really sure why.

And I haven't seen this at Disneyland - This is the only Disney character that i had my picture taken with!

AHHH! Disney. Maybe some day I will go to Japan and finally seee that last one.

Messing on the Champs

After our trip throught the netherworld, Mike and I went off to the Champs Elysees to climb the Arc de Triumphe and cruise around for a bit.
Someone very nicely pointed out the stairs underneath the street that took us to the cirle so that we didn't have to risk life and limb running through Paris traffic like we saw some doing.

When we arrived we had to pay our fee (of course) and then climb all of these lovely stairs to reach the top. I forget to count, so I don't know how this compares to climbing to the top of St. Peter's Basilica.

Once we arrived, we had a beautiful 360 degree of the streets of Paris. And we could easily see the Eiffel Tower, too.

Back down below, Mike darted out into traffic to take this picture of the Arc all lit up.

We didn't spend too much time wandering along the Champs, but we did duck into Virgin Mega store and into Sephora. DIdn't buy anything. It all really wasn't our scene.

Return to Paris - Catacombs

Yes folks, we are back in Paris again. Well, not really back in Paris, but I thought maybe I should try updating the blog now that summer is almost over. According to my parents, as far as they are concerned, we still haven't left Paris, so I thought I had better go back and finish up our trip!If you go backto the last post about Ian, you may remember that we were waiting in line to enter the Catacombs. We made in not not very many minutes before the entrance closed.
The catacombs is a place where they took the disinterred bones of many, if not most of Paris' dead in a time when they wanted more ground to build homes and businesses. If you want to know more, wikipedia has a pretty good article about them.
In a few places, people even made elaborate carvings. These were done by refugees who tried to hide in the catacombs during the French Revolution.


All of the bones are arranged by the cemeteries from whence they came, very carefully palce, as far as we can tell. When you leave the catacombs, they inspect your backpacks. Before we left they had taken away a skull that someone had tried to sneek out. Gross. and sad. Ian did really great underground. The way was well lit and he wasn't too creeped out by all the bones. We had a good talk about why they were there and about respecting them. The way was much longer than we ever thought it would be.

A Speedy Birthday

We finally had Krista's birthday party. We went to Winners, a local go-kart place and she brought along four of her friends.
I had a hard time getting them to model their head socks for me!
But they looked super cool in their helmets and racing suits.
One of Krista's friends was freaked out by the practice laps, so she didn't run the final long race. Krista was the most cautious of the racers left in the game. One K's friends, Isaac, managed to do a great job of blocking Mike from passing him for quite awhile. It was much fun to watch.

Mike and Tyler raced too. They, of course, managed to lap everybody - more than once in most cases. Mike was the overall winner of the races. I was in charge of keeping the party going and taking pictures, so I didn't get to feel the speed. Some other time!

Many faces of Ian

We returned from Amboise early enough in the after noon that we had plenty of time to take Ian with us to the catacombs. Yes - his mom wouldn't let us take him to "Chateau de Walt" as we called it in front of Ian, but she was happy to let us take him to see the bones of uncountable numbers of people.

Any way - the line was a bit of a wait, so we entertained Ian by letting him make funny faces for the camera. He was happy to oblige and to admire himself in the view screen.

Chateaus Aplenty

Today we took a mini-bus tour of a few chateaus along the Loire. Why mini-bus? Because the only car rental place in Amboise is much farther on the skirts than I wanted to walk to in a steady drizzle! Bu tour tour guide was very nice and pretty funny. He lives in Amboise, so we got to ride with him to Tours to pick up the rest of the group and ask him any questions we wanted to.
The first two picture are of Villandry, a non-royal chateau with very extensive, complicated gardens. We didn't even go inside the home. I have a little video of Mike inside the maze, but I don't know if I want to post it to youtube so that I can embed it here. Maybe someday.
The next chateau was Azay de Rideau, designed by women - man off at war, leave me the checkbook so that I can build us a home. They actually diverted a river to act as the moat.

Here is our lunch stop back at Tours. Mike was trying to get free Internet from McDonalds. We ate a hurried lunch - not at McD's - and as we were getting ready to go back to the van, we spotted a English imports clothing store and ended up buying cool things for Tyler, Mike and Krista. Krist really scored, because her birthday was two days after we arrived home, so every one of her presents came from France.
Next stop - Chenonceaux - The biggest tour attraction of them all. They've done a great job of making it accessible to lots of vehicles, plus make every room interesting to look at. The hallway with all of the black and white tiles is actually just a bridge. The mistress of the king got tired of being rowed across the river, so she had this built instead. During WWII, one side of the river was in occupied territory while the other side was in free territory, so someone could literally cross the bridge to freedom. Not that easily of course, but still kind of interesting.
Mike mugged for me in the kitchen of the chateau.

The last visit was to CLose Luc, where Leonardo lived the last three years of his life. No, this is not his house, but Mike did find this fixer-upper the grounds. Interesting side note - while I was in teh WC, I noticed that the toilet paper dispenser was made by Rossignol. Not just ski makers, I guess.

We did not join the group for another tour of Amboise's chateau, instead we wandered around town. Dinner was leisurely crepes at a hip downtown bar/diner, where we could watch the world go by from its neon glow.

Mike also took this beautiful picture of the bridge at night.

In the morning we had to bid farewell to Amboise, but not after Mike got to eat the rest of our host's pear/apple compote!! We had to hang out until all of the other guests left the tabe - no room for us - but it was worth the wait. Yveline put on a great continental breakfast!