Category: Miscellaneous

Paris Disney

June 7, 2015

Paris Disney consists of two parks: Disneyland Parc and Walt Disney Studios. Yesterday we purchased combined tickets for both and spent a little over 12 hours visiting them.

As with the other Disney parks I have visited (7 in total now) these are places where it’s virtually impossible not to have fun. Aside from the rides themselves, the landscaping and design of the parks is almost enough to keep you entertained.

We ride virtually every available ride – some twice – in both parks, but skipped the shows. It would be impossible to do and see everything in a single day.

Highlights included Tower of Terror (more or less identical to the Florida one), ‘Le Phantom Manor’ (ie. the Haunted Mansion, which was a bit different compared to Florida and Tokyo) and Pirates Of The Carribean (again, slightly different).

Oh and this guys iron-on shirt was a highlight as well:

Their version of Tomorrowland (called Adventureland) was amazingly designed with a strong Jules Verne motif as shown in the photo above, but almost all of it was closed. I suppose they are renovating. This was a shame since this park has the new Space Mountain that I was looking forward to ride. We did the no-line-at-all old version of Star Tours instead:

As we were leaving we walked past the castle and into a cavern underneath that housed an enormous and wonderful animatronic dragon. His head moved about and growled and snarled and he kept taking his claw on the ground. It was extremely well done and a highlight of the park for me.

At the end of the day we were completely exhausted but we’d all had a load of fun. These parks are just as good as the ones in Florida and Tokyo and easily worth a visit if you’re ever in this part of the world.

The Eiffel Tower

June 7, 2015

Ever since I was a little man I wanted to visit this. Today that dream came true.

We arrived just at opening but even then had to wait about an hour before we could start the ascent. And this was in the shortest line, since we’d opted for the stairs.

Security was very tight, including bag checks, metal detectors, a visible police presence and numerous warning signs for pickpockets. That said the morale of the (very large) crowds was high, and the overall experience was a good one.

The tower had three viewing levels, the lower two accessible via stairs and the summit only accessible (to the public) by a lift. There are 670 stairs from the ground to the second level (about 40% of the height of the tower) and we climbed them all. The above photo was taken from this level looking northwest. See the shadow of the tower?

It wasn’t enough to go only halfway up though – we of course bought a second ticket and rode the lift to the very top! The lift is mostly glass, and the views as you ascend (like the above photo) are magnificent. Here are some photos from the summit of the tower, 300 m above the ground:

If you look carefully at the second of these photos, you may be able to work out where I stood to take the one at the start of this post.

We were very impressed with the tower. It certainly lived up to its reputation as one of the world’s foremost tourist attractions 🙂

Afterwards we headed to The Catacombs, but the line was extremely long and very slow-moving so we decided to walk to a nearby park. Much like the rest of the city, it was full of ancient statues (and tourists!). This lion – just one of dozens in the park – was cast in 1870:

We returned to the Notre Dame area to shop at the riverside vendors that seem to line the streets for miles.

Selling mostly books and art prints, this is a fascinating place to shop and one that certainly made me wish I had a bigger suitcase. I’m sure KLS would have gone crazy buying prints here!

Needless to say I made a few purchases myself, including of the postcard variety. Watch your mail boxes dear readers, a little piece of Paris may arrive one day soon 🙂

Paris

June 6, 2015

Yesterday I caught this train from London to Paris:

The trip was comfortable and seemed quick. The channel tunnel was only about 20 minutes in length, so we were clearly going at a good speed. Once in France I was treated to views like this for the remaining 90 minutes to Paris:

I took the subway to the hotel where I was met by Sue! Although the rooms are tiny, the hotel is quite good and very well located.

It was about 4pm and very warm out (35C) but we almost immediately set out for a walk along the river to Notre Dame. This was perhaps not the wisest of plans:

That’s Riley checking to see if Sue had been overcome by the heat! It was hot hot hot and quite unpleasant, but we’re all Australian so that doesn’t bother us does it? At any rate I forgot the heat once this came into view:

Magnificent isn’t it? I left the girls in the shade (since they’d been here already) and joined the line to enter.

There was a service being held to bless the sacrament. This made the interior even more spectacular, seeing it while the priest sang his rites (in French) and the people responded. The sheer size of the cathedral was breathtaking:

After Notre Dame we went shopping to get Riley some shoes and we stumbled upon the biggest grocery store I’ve ever seen. The produce section alone was about as big as my local and we boggled at not only the variety but also the (low!) prices. Those lucky French!!

So after one day my impressions? Paris is busy, hot, green, beautiful and has the worst traffic I’ve ever seen.

Oh and I can’t understand anything the locals are saying 😉

Robot Claw