Paris Part 1: Infiltrating France

Why not here? Why not now? What better place to dream than in Paris?
-Ratatouille, Disney/Pixar

Why not here? The UK is an obvious launch pad for European exploration. It's literally an island unto itself, set on the edge of a continent saturated in history (often of the bloody or sweaty kind). I've had many people advise me to take full advantage of my free time and whatever money I can spare to travel while I'm here, for I'll never get the chance to do so so easily or cheaply again.

Why not now? It was Halloween for pete's sake! What better excuse to travel to new and foreign lands to compare cultural customs? (Not that France is much into Halloween)

What better place to dream than in Paris? OK- for this one, I can think of several, for I certainly did not get much sleep over the three day weekend. I'd say the UK was much better for this, as living here does afford one some time to take things leisurely.

This story starts with Charlotte. By serendipitous coincidence, my friend from high school, Charlotte, ended up going to London this year to be a culinary student around the same time I started my PhD program. While Charlotte will unfortunately be leaving early next year as her program runs only 6 months, her presence affords both some of the familiarity of home and the perfect opportunity for a known travel buddy with the same urgent motivation to see the world as I.
Charlotte (who was for some months a cast member at Disneyland Anaheim) and I decided to check out Disneyland Paris for their Halloween event and to do a flyby of Paris proper in the same weekend. This plan worked out to actually consist of an enormous amount of walking.

After meeting up in London the night before (which involved an hour-late bus and a 3 hour bus ride), Charlotte and I hopped on and off a couple of city buses and did a quick "we're geeky tourists" stop at Speedy's cafe, which happens to be the location of the BBC's 221B Bakers Street front door. Squee!

Arriving in London (Finally!)

Door and cafe look familiar, Sherlock fans?

Traditional English Breakfast. Mine had french fries. WHY?

Our next stop was St Pancras Station, which to me seems to refer to some human organ of perhaps religious significance (?), for the Eurostar, which would take us straight off the edge of England, underwater for 37.9 km and into France in a manner the folks at Normandy probably would have wished they had.
Truthfully though, Charlotte and I though we had just gone through a very long English tunnel when we had actually emerged in France. It's much quicker than you'd think!

St Pancreas Station, leaving for France!

St Pancreas

I think we might be in France. Just a feeling.

Euros. They have pretty colors.

The Eurostar spit us straight out at Disneyland Paris, and Charlotte and I decided to walk around the shopping area outside the park for a bit before trying our hotel.

Where we would be heading later that night.

Always around!

We were highly amused by the celebrities/film characters they chose to put up behind that white bit of this wall. It included the Jonas bros, the twilight trio, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone. 

Charlotte.

Halloween decorations outside the park. 

Made of legos. We were very impressed.

Mostly this area seemed to be restaurants and and some shops, but we were impressed by the hot air balloon. This is, after all, Paris, where November 21, 1783, the first untethered manned flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes. (Yes, I wikipedia-ed this. But Charlotte knew it!)

Jean-Fraçois and François may have been untethered, but the people in this one one were. Can't let the tourists use it to get into the park!

One of the most noticeable things about this time of year is (1) the absence of Thanksgiving as a buffer between Halloween and Christmas and (2) the commercial creep of holiday advertising. See below for Exhibit A (mind you, THIS IS ON HALLOWEEN DAY).

I want to eat gingerbread mickeys....

So after getting our fill of fighting our way through other tourists while carrying all of our bags, we hopped on another train to go find our hotel. (You know, after spending an hour waiting for buses, trying to talk to the bus drivers who sometimes barely spoke English to find out which bus our hotel supposedly sent for its residents, getting misdirected and re-directed half a dozen times, and finally going back to the information booth that had originally told us to look for a bus in order to be redirected yet again, this time to the train. Simple, right?)

The outskirts of Paris, as with practically everything we saw while there (with a few exceptions), are gorgeous, by the way. 

The street the train at which the train let us out.

Grassy area outside a pub and the train station

Residences

After turning ourselves around three times, we finally made it to our hotel, which turned out to be reaaaally weird. I might've thought they were going for the Halloween theme, but they just really never turned the light on in the hallway.

Our Hotel

Creepy anyone? I definitely tripped over some garbage bags lying in the hallway several times. 

Finally we put our costumes on and went down to Disneyland to start celebrating Halloween. BUT WAIT! It can never be that simple! We ended up waiting at the ticket booth for an hour because apparently our tickets needed to be printed rather than being scanned straight off our smart phones. Combined with translating English to French and a really terrible internet connection, it became an exercise in patience. Fortunately I think we had adopted an "it is what it is" attitude about the whole trip, which smoothed our ruffled feathers a bit. I had already gotten a head start on "it is what it is" earlier that week when I discovered I purchased a nonrefundable, nonexchangeable Eurostar ticket for the 16th of October rather than the 30th and had to purchase another (those things aren't cheap!).

But anyway, we did eventually get into the park. Halloween time!

The Disney Hotel sits literally right over the entrance.

Halloween decorations over the transition tunnels into the park
(you know, the tunnels under the railroad, just after the ticket collections?)

I replaced Charlotte with Colette from Ratatouille. Thought it was time to exchange travel partners.
To be fair, Charlotte exchanged me for Wendy Darling.

Photo bombing her own photo.

And so, we forayed off into Disneyland... to be continued. Next up: the Halloween Soiree 

City Hall at sunset: let Halloween night begin!