Paris, Day 1 What better way to spend Valentine’s Day than heading south to the city of lights–Paris! President’s day conveniently fell near sweetheart day to afford us a 4 day weekend in France. Original plans had all 5 of us traveling south but Lauren couldn’t manage to get away from cheer team practice (and she wanted to spend Valentine’s day with her special sweetheart). So, Will and Lilly eagerly left school a couple hours early for the 7 hour drive. Soon after we crossed the border into France, it started to snow. And it continued to snow for the next 2 hours, so much snow that the road was quickly reduced to one lane traffic and our drive morphed into more than 9 hours to our hotel outside Disneyland Paris.
After a good night’s rest, we woke to sunny skies and a fabulous French breakfast. Just ask Will how good breakfast is in France…crepes, cold cuts, french cheese, baguettes and strong coffee or hot chocolate as your beverage. The hotel gave us one free breakfast for our stay and we’re happy we chose the first day to fill up. We chose to go to Disneyland on our first day: weekday crowds are typically smaller and it was a great motivator to get the kids excited for going to Paris. I bought tickets online for 79 euro per person which allowed us to visit both parks in one day. We could have taken the train to Disney but we chose to drive because we’d heard parking was convenient and cheap. It’s true! We paid 9 euro for a full day and had the benefit of not waiting for the train once the parks closed. The kids chose Walt Disney Studios for the first park to visit. Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller Coaster had minimal lines and we sailed onto our favorites. We did notice that the French rides tend to be a bit more intense…and after one hour of riding crazy coasters, Tim and I both had slight headaches and queasy tummies. Around lunchtime, we switched parks and had a hearty lunch in Adventureland with African drummers serenading us by singing Shakira’s WakaWaka song. The food was great..Lilly even had a kids’ pizza in the shape of Mickey Mouse.
The magical day wrapped up with the spectacular Disney Dreams show. Featuring Sleeping Beauty’s castle as the backdrop for the laser light and water show, we were entertained with famous Disney tunes and characters projected onto the castle. Once the fireworks hit the dark sky, we knew it was time to leave. It was a great visit to a Disney theme park.