(All photos of us together are on Jared’s phone... oops)
We arrived at Disneyland Paris around 2:00 today (with a time change - we are now 6 hours ahead of Florida, 7 ahead of Indiana/Kansas). We spent a bit of time confused as to where to go since we knew our hotel was supposed to be walking distance. Finally we followed others with suitcases through a security checkpoint that let us into the “Disney Springs” area here, which all the hotels are kind of built around. We wandered out past a side and down a hidden little path and came upon our hotel. From there we had to wander around until we found the front desk. I think it’s fair to say their signage is NOT up to the par we are used to with Disney World. Ironically, we had been warned by a friend just a few days ago who had recently visited that “they aren’t quite as efficient as we’re used to.” I guess we’ll see where else we see this! Beyond that little adventure, check in was easy enough and we had our key and access to our room. We’re lucky that our door is just 3 floors up from right above where the hidden path meets our hotel, so we have the easiest access to the walking path back to the parks that we possibly could here.
After getting settled, we mapped out a plan and made our way to Paris. It was about a 40 minute train ride downtown where we arrived a short walk away from Notre Dame. The church was much more blocked off than we expected - we had to stay on the other side of the street. But despite the obvious construction, the front looked perfect still and they’d made it easy to still see and get pictures of, which is appreciated. From Notre Dame, we walked to the Louvre so Jared could see “the giant glass triangle”. The whole area there is probably my favorite in Paris, the park near it has fountains and chairs you can set up anywhere and the Louvre and the buildings surrounding it was huge and beautiful. It just all gives off a sense of a relaxing, happy place.
We started to make our way to the arc at that point, but after about 20 minutes we didn’t seem to be any closer, despite having been staring down the street at it the whole time. Due to the temperature dropping, our feet starting to hurt, and not having fully mapped out our return trip yet, Jared chose to forgo seeing that for the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower seems to have new security points in place to walk underneath it, but it wasn’t hard to navigate still. There also appears to be some repair going on there, but the whole thing is still visible and the rides to the top were still running. We got a number photos at and around the tower and then started a trek to a nearby train station with a mapped out return route we were 75% sure would work... the trains were not obvious either (which I actually remembered from the last time). Lucky us, we’d figured it out correctly (Dana did. Dana appears to primarily be able to map out train routes - can’t go the right direction on the street - but train routes she’s got down).
Back on Disney property, we did a quick walk through the store to get out of the cold (the temperature had gotten VERY chilly once the sun dropped). We then grabbed Five Guys for a quick dinner and made our way back to the hotel. Jared even found in the hotel details that we get one free hot drink from a hot drink machine a day - so we went and got the hot chocolate I had been craving since the Eiffel Tower. Now we’re all washed up (and apparently flooding our bathroom, the shower curtain is NOT doing it’s job) and we’re getting ready to go tomorrow. 7am wake up it seems, Extra Magic Hours start at 8:30 and we have just one day to find all the differences and do all the rides in both parks here! I’ll probably tune in again Friday morning since we don’t have many plans between checking out and our 5pm train back to London. TO DISNEY!
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