A New Adventure Calls to Us- a Disneyland Paris TR extravaganza! COMPLETED 3/15

[NJlauren]

Sainte-Chapelle is a medieval royal chapel, and was the chapel of the kings of France until the 1300s. It’s known mostly for its beautiful stained glass collection. It’s a popular tourist destination but it’s even busier now that Notre Dame is closed because a lot of people are going to Sainte-Chapelle as an alternative.

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Pictures don’t do this justice, guys.

I loved this stop when we were in Paris last year! it was so magnificent, i think last time i was there i just did not appreciate the beauty at all! Dillon and I may have been shhhhed a few times but we loved it!

What a great start to your trip in Paris... I am a little mad, it just makes me want to go back again! It is such a magnificent city!

LOVE your day our of the city how lovely, and you crack me up listening to the story and missing your tour!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

That sounds pretty reasonable.

For real! Especially considering you can't really get to these places another way except a rental car, which is much more expensive.

And holy picturesque!

I could have stayed here for hours. Just brought a book and chilled for a while (with a baguette, of course. And some wine)

He looks sooooo relaxed

It was hard to get him to keep moving! It was a surprisingly comfy rock.

Food looked good, too!

Sooo good. It was one of those situations where I wasn't sure what I wanted then they brought this dish out to the person next to me (who was quite literally 6 inches away- we were PACKED in there). And I pointed at it and said that's definitely what I want.

wonderful photos! Enjoyed that very much!

It was such a fun day! And nice to do something off the beaten path.

Okay technically most of the paths were beaten, just not by Americans.

 

[rdkeim]

Enjoying your TR! I'm glad you are including your non-DLP time in France. So far our 2 trips to Europe have been on organized tours. I would love to get brave and do it on our own - your day trip to the country sounds wonderful!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Dillon and I may have been shhhhed a few times but we loved it!

Haha it is so stunning! I wish we had gone when it was a little less crowded, but even then it was a great experience.

it just makes me want to go back again! It is such a magnificent city!

I can't wait to go back! It's definitely on my list of places I would happily revisit.

LOVE your day our of the city how lovely, and you crack me up listening to the story and missing your tour!

Jon was not too happy that I got him into that predicament, especially because as we were waiting with the group he kept asking, "Are you sure this is the tour?" And I kept assuring him that it was

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Enjoying your TR! I'm glad you are including your non-DLP time in France. So far our 2 trips to Europe have been on organized tours. I would love to get brave and do it on our own - your day trip to the country sounds wonderful!

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I wondered if anyone would even want to read about non Disney stuff so it's good to know that some do!

We love doing our own thing, especially in places where things aren't totally foreign. Yes, Europe is not completely the same as the US but there are enough similarities (and so many people know English) that it's easier. We love the flexibility and we have stumbled upon some pretty fantastic stuff! Of course the flip side is when things go wrong you have to deal with it and sometimes the things you stumble upon are less than fantastic

 

[pkondz]

I could have stayed here for hours. Just brought a book and chilled for a while (with a baguette, of course. And some wine)

Of course!

It was hard to get him to keep moving! It was a surprisingly comfy rock.

Those two words don’t usually go together.

Sooo good. It was one of those situations where I wasn't sure what I wanted then they brought this dish out to the person next to me (who was quite literally 6 inches away- we were PACKED in there). And I pointed at it and said that's definitely what I want.

Good timing on that then.

Okay technically most of the paths were beaten, just not by Americans.

 

[ksinniger]

I'm reliving my own Paris-DLP trip from last June through this report! I had the pleasure of delivering my 16 year old to a theater school (she spent 4 weeks in a 16th century chateau in Normandy with a private chef and WW2 relics scattered around the grounds, and SOMEONE had to make sure she got there OK), and if I was flying to Paris you can be darn sure I was spending time there!

We did DLP first, and after a slight day-long detour to the south of France (otherwise known as "don't forget your backpack on the superfast train!"), and had 3 days in Paris. None of it was enough time!

We loved the Saint Chappelle, and managed to time our morning visit so that we felt like we were standing inside of a rainbow. You're absolutely right that photos don't do it justice! And when we visited the Queens gardens, there was a group of young adults (maybe a bridal party?) all dressed in period-attire posing for photos around the pool where you could pilot those little boats. And we caught a concert in one of the side gardens by what we think was the gay men's choir of Paris (our French lessons never quite took).

I can't wait for more photos!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

(she spent 4 weeks in a 16th century chateau in Normandy with a private chef and WW2 relics scattered around the grounds, and SOMEONE had to make sure she got there OK

WOW sounds like an experience of a lifetime! Did she love it??

and managed to time our morning visit so that we felt like we were standing inside of a rainbow.

Oh man I bet that was a phenomenal experience.

I'll post more pictures as soon as I can!

 

[buzzrelly]

What an amazing day you spent! Your photos were just gorgeous! I was worried when you said you walked an hour and a half there that you would have to walk back too…I'm glad to see that wasn't the case!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

What an amazing day you spent! Your photos were just gorgeous! I was worried when you said you walked an hour and a half there that you would have to walk back too…I'm glad to see that wasn't the case!

Oh no I am not about that! I planned our walks to coincide with the bus schedule so it worked out!

 

[missangelalexis]

Days 1-3 sounded awesome and packed full of fun things! So many beautiful pictures!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Days 1-3 sounded awesome and packed full of fun things! So many beautiful pictures!

Very fun and very full!!

 

[amazingact21]

he Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay. It’s the site of an abbey built in the 12th century.

Your pictures from here look amazing!

he directions were in French but we used the Google Translate app to translate (pro tip- Google Translate has an amazing feature where you can use your camera and hold it up to whatever you need translated and it will ~very roughly~ translate it for you).

This app has saved my behind on many a German grocery store visit.

. I may or may not have eaten a baguette while hiking in a French forest and it may or may not have been one of the highlights of the trip.

Sounds perfect.

I had mistakenly taken us to fairytale story time. Which was 100% in French and 100% for small children.

Oh my goodness, I laughed too hard at this mishap. Oops. But also, how many times in your life can you say you accidentally went to a French story time in an old building? It'll be something you will remember for a long time.

It was absolutely tiny. It could maybe fit 20 people, but the street front wall opened all the way up so there was fresh air coming in. We squeezed into some seats and ordered a delicious meal!

Sometimes, those hole in the walls restaurants serve the best food. Glad you found such a delicious meal after a busy day walking and exploring.

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Your day trip sounds amazing and gorgeous. Something about walking through the French countryside eating a baguette sounds like perfection. I definitely would've gotten lost way more times than you guys did!

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Your pictures from here look amazing!

I took soooo many. Every time you turned there was something else that was just absolutely beautiful.

This app has saved my behind on many a German grocery store visit.

The only times it really failed us was at restaurants, when the menu was hand written in cursive on a chalkboard. Google doesn't do cursive.

But also, how many times in your life can you say you accidentally went to a French story time in an old building? It'll be something you will remember for a long time.

So right!

Glad you found such a delicious meal after a busy day walking and exploring.

I have daydreams about this meal.

Something about walking through the French countryside eating a baguette sounds like perfection

It was the best! I felt like an old timey adventurer.

I definitely would've gotten lost way more times than you guys did!

Luckily the paths were pretty clear...once you could find them

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Out there, strolling by the Seine- a surprise day in Paris

So how does one have a surprise day in Paris? Well mes amis, it goes like this: I wanted more time in Paris so we made it happen. The end.

The real story is we had a second day trip planned for this day to go visit the Palace of Fontainebleau, which is a massive royal palace outside of the city. It looked like a great alternative to Versailles, which we wanted to avoid since we were still on the tail end of the tourist season in Paris. The plan was to spend the morning touring the palace then the afternoon hiking through the surrounded woods.

As glorious as that sounds, I had already fallen so deeply in love with Paris that I knew I wanted to spend more time in the actual city. There were a few things from the first couple days that we didn’t get to and I wanted a chance to experience them. Since we hadn’t booked anything ahead of time for Fontainebleau, we made the decision the day before to just stay in the city.

And how does one start a surprise day in Paris? By sleeping in, naturally.

But only just a little bit, because we had stuff to do. Like a photo shoot on our little balcony.

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As we were leaving the hotel, Jon realized he forgot something and went back into our room to get it. He came back out and said, “Uh, I don’t think we’ve been locking our hotel room door…”

Uhm what?

So our door didn’t have a modern key card type lock, it had an actual key with an actual keyhole. But there was this latch in the knob you had to push to open and when it closed it made a really loud click, which I assumed was the sound of it locking itself automatically.

I assumed wrong.

Turns out to lock the door you actually have to…lock the door.

I almost fell over I was laughing so hard.

Now, granted, I was only laughing because nothing had happened. We had been leaving our passports, spare credit cards, Euros, iPads, etc in there (and not in a safe, shame on us). But the situation was just so comical that I couldn’t help it.

Anyway, all that laughing made us hungry so we stopped by a patisserie called Paul for some breakfast. It was delightful, as all of our breakfast treats were. I guess that’s the norm when you essentially have dessert for breakfast every day.

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Then we went off exploring! We walked north with the intent of heading toward the Tuileries Gardens. We decided to be extra Parisian and take a stroll down by the Seine. It was so peaceful and such a beautiful morning. This was one of the small moments from Paris that makes me want to go back.

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Eventually we made it to the gardens and walked through them on our way to l’Orangerie. The Tuileries are nice, but not near as pretty as Luxembourg.

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In l’Orangerie (which is the only art museum we visited *insert disgusted gasps here*) we started in the lower levels and browsed their collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. They have lots of Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, etc.

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The major exhibit in the museum, though, is Monet’s Water Lilies. They built a room specifically to showcase the collection, which features four sections arranged so they cover most of the walls in the oval space.

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It was a little crowded, but not too bad. We took our time to sit and reflect on each section, which has its own characteristics and coloring. You don’t realize how massive these paintings are until you see them like this! We aren’t really art people, but this was truly special.

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Next up we went back to the Place de la Concorde to take some photos and explore a little more. One super neat thing about this square is that if you stand in the middle and look to one side you can see the Louvre and if you look to the other side you can see the Arc de Triomphe. Haussmann had a thing for sight lines, I guess.

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I also wanted to go back to Pont Alexander III to get some photos so we headed that direction. When we got there my camera battery gave its last flicker of life, but never fear for I always carry a spare! However, when I inserted said spare my camera refused to acknowledge it as the source of life that it is. So we walked all that way and I could only use my phone for photos. Womp womp.

Some turned out alright, though.

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Plus I had a lil photoshoot to soak in the Anastasia-ness of it all.

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At this point I knew I needed to go get my other spare (as a rule I take four camera batteries with me on every trip. You can never be too careful. Because, ya know, one of them might decide it’s not a battery anymore and instead is a useless lump of toxin-filled plastic), but we realized we were super close to Les Invalides so we stopped in there to explore a little first.

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Les Invalides was built in the 1600s as a home for soldiers who were injured or sick. Now it houses the Musee de l’Armee, a military history museum. There are also still about a hundred retired soldiers living there. The museum is massive and someone could easily spend hours exploring. We didn’t have that kind of time so we just did a quick walk through some of the sections.

There’s a really big multimedia exhibit in the basement focused on Charles de Gaulle. It’s an audio tour and most of it is available in English. It’s incredibly detailed and focuses on Charles de Gaulle but also talks about WWII in general a bit.

After that we took a look at old school armor, which is always fascinating. Do you ever stop to think about how heavy all that is? A horse had to wear its own armor (probably close to 100lbs), carry a dude (probably 150-200 lbs minimum) who is wearing his armor (100 lbs again). How did they not all just drop from exhaustion??

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Oh wait. They did.

The visual focal point of Les Invalides is the golden dome, which tops the royal chapel.

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Side story that I learned on our bike tour: King Louis XIV (the Sun King) had Les Invalides- and the dome- constructed. When the dome was almost complete he visited the site and looked up at the top of the dome from inside. And he was angry because he couldn’t see the paintings on the ceiling of the dome. Because they were 350 feet in the air. So he told the architect that he must lower the dome.

After it had already been built.

Lower…the dome…

The architect, who understood physics, knew that wasn’t an option. So what did they do? They built a dome inside the dome. So when you look up you aren’t seeing the true top of the dome, just the 2nd one they put in to please the Sun King.

Currently it’s most famous for being the final resting place of Napoleon I, who required that even his remains would be spectacularly displayed.

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His actual sarcophagus is massive and lays on a pedestal. See, Napoleon wanted people to bow to him, even in death. So if you’re on the bottom floor you have to look up at him, and if you’re on the top floor you have to bend over to look down. What a grade A d-bag.

We weren’t terribly far from our hotel at this point so instead of taking the Metro we decided to walk and find somewhere on the way to stop for lunch. I had a croque monsieur which was incredible, but really, really greasy. And now I can tell you from experience that the croque monsieur at Be Our Guest is nowhere NEAR authentic (but it’s still yummy).

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And I had to take a photo of the drink prices as proof that wine is cheaper than Coke in a lot of places in France.

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[dolewhipdreams]

After our hotel pit stop, we made our way to another museum (fresh batteries in tow). We went to the Cluny Museum, which was on my must-do list for Paris. It’s their medieval museum (I would just like to note that this was the first time I think I’ve ever spelled medieval right on the first try) and is built on top of the ruins of an old abbey which was built on top of the ruins of an even older Roman bath. So yeah, it was like really old.

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The museum is known for two really cool things: the Unicorn Tapestries from the middle ages and the frigidarium section of the Roman baths. And guess what two things weren’t available when we were there. But we did get to see some other medieval art and different tapestries (sans unicorns), as well as some sections of the bath. They even had some decorative columns that were carved over 2000 years ago.

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If you like old stuff, go to the Cluny Museum.

After that we did some more walking around the Latin Quarter, so named because the universities were built there and the students spoke Latin. It’s one of the oldest parts of the city, since it wasn’t torn down during the major reconstruction in the mid-1800s. We stopped at l’Eglise Saint-Severin, one of the oldest churches still standing in Paris.

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The original structure was built in the 11th century, although the final structure that stands was completed in the early 1500s. It has very distinct architecture and beautiful stained glass windows.

Our Old Stuff in Paris Tour continued with a stop at the oldest street sign in Paris, at 42 rue Galande.

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It was carved in the 1300s.

We wandered through the Latin Quarter for a bit, taking in the sights and sounds.

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Then we moved on to the oldest tree in Paris. This tree was planted in 1601 by the king’s gardener and sits in a small square near the Seine. Fun fact, the tree is carefully tended by the city. It’s supported externally and very carefully pruned so that its life can be extended.

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We grabbed a delicious snack from an American-owned bake shop in the Latin Quarter called Circus Bakery. If you go, I recommend the cinnamon twists.

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I took my twist on the go as we made our way in the direction of the river. But first, a photo shoot:

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Once at the river we took some time to browse the Bouquinistes, which are those little green huts along the river that sell books, art, and other novelties. I picked up two Disney story books written in French and a Euro Disney pin. We also saw a stall with a magazine announcing Walt Disney’s death. I considered buying it, but at €45 it was a bit out of my price range.

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Next we wandered north to the Ile de Saint-Louis, which is one of two islands in the Seine. It’s a very upscale area with shops, restaurants, and hotels. At this time of day it was very quiet, and we had a nice peaceful stroll through the island.

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I wanted to get a closer look at the Louvre so we decided to turn that direction, passing some interesting sights on the way.

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My feet were absolutely dying by the time we finally reached the Louvre. But guys, did you know that the Louvre is freaking huge? And that if you’re coming from the east you have to walk pretty much the entire length to get to the entrance? Me and the lifeless stumps attached to the end of my legs weren’t too happy about that.

But eventually we made it! And it was after closing time so the courtyard was nice and empty, plus the lighting was great. We (read: I) took a lot of photos and we spent time looking at the architecture. The entire palace is lined with statues of important French people, so that was super cool to look at.

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After that it was dinner time! I was in favor of taking some kind of motorized transportation but Jon convinced me to walk. We used our now-favorite form of research to choose where to eat dinner. We looked on Google Maps for a place that had a lot of restaurants then we went down the street and just looked at menus until we found something that looked good!

[We didn't eat here but isn't it so pretty?]


[Where we actually did eat (and drink wine), which was super cute]​

We had another delicious French dinner and then it was back to the hotel to let my sad, sore little feet finally rest.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Found this thread and am following along. Was in Paris for only one day last summer, I will be back in a year or two and have already picked up a couple of things to add to my consideration list.

Love your writing style! I’m also reading your Backstage Magic TR as I hope to do that one some day.

 

[lvcourtneyy]

So how does one have a surprise day in Paris? Well mes amis, it goes like this: I wanted more time in Paris so we made it happen. The end.

This is an excellent story.

And I had to take a photo of the drink prices as proof that wine is cheaper than Coke in a lot of places in France.

I vote we bring this trend to America.

 

[dolewhipdreams]

Was in Paris for only one day last summer, I will be back in a year or two and have already picked up a couple of things to add to my consideration list.

oh neat that you get to go back! What’s on your list to see?

Love your writing style! I’m also reading your Backstage Magic TR as I hope to do that one some day.

Thank you! Both trips were incredible.

This is an excellent story.

Thank you, I try to keep my stories detailed and gripping.

I vote we bring this trend to America.

Ooo but I do love my coke so that would be a tough one