Paris plus Disneyland

We had a wonderful five days in Paris.  Visited many of the highpoints (literally top of Notre Dame and top of Eiffle Tower) and Disneyland.  Of course it wouldn't be a major city major attraction if there was some scaffolding covering some of the attractions, some signature piece of art out on loan or being refurbished so missing from a musuem or one strike that leads to other plans - in our case the Arc de Triomphe so we headed to the 'best ice-cream in the world' and had a Bethillon ice cream on the banks of the Seine - fair compromise!  

It is a wonderful city to holiday in.  We couldn't do it all.  And it just wasn't long enough.

We rented an apartment which was built in 16th Century in a great quarter of Paris.  We could walk all over from our home.  Ellie and Jenny enjoyed the market. Cheese in one shop, fruit in the next, vegetables, meat (marvellous terrines) and of course cakes and bread (with pain au chocolat being the childrens's favourite) all in seperate shops. The quality of the food is magnificiant. And the wine too of course!

One of the many highlights was meeting up with Melbourne friends and spending time exploring and eating with them. It's such a small world when travelling - they booked well after us, had no idea where we are staying and when we finally communicated we found out our apartments where only three minutes walk from each other.  We enjoyed dinner and breakfast together.  And an expensive private art gallery visit where we met, caught up and soaked up the Monet Waterlillies.

One day we wandered back from the metro via the Georges Pompediou centre and caught an hour of various street theate - break dancers, a soccer dude doing amazing things with a soccer ball and a 'bubble' man with two sticks linked by two ropes and a bucket of bubble mix who could create bubbles a metre wide.

The number of people moving in this city is phenomenal.  Even in the 'quiet' times of the day the metro is jammed shoulder to shoulder and there is a huge amount of foot traffic on the streets which may be a factor of the Paris population density (almost same population as London in half the space) and also just the Paris way of life. Living the cafe life in the City of Lights.

However we had no problems with crowds at Disneyland.  We had heard the horror stories about the amount of time spent in lines, but going mid-week and off-season proved to be the way to maximise the ride time.  We had arrived right on opening time, raced of to Big Thunder Mountain, 10 minute queue, off the ride with massive grins on our faces and then straight back in it was so good and had done two rides in 30 minutes!  Big Thunder Mountain proved to be a hit with all of us,  We rode it 4 times. Other rides were enjoyed too.  The kids enjoyed driving their own cars on Autopia.  By 4pm we had done enough.  We had enjoyed it, but don't need to go again.  Thanks to Mia for having a birthday and wanting to go to Disneyland.