We escaped cold Switzerland and arrived in a very mild Paris, with unusual 15ยฐC and several days of sunshine and blue skies.
As it was Yang Ke’s first trip to Paris we started with a visit of the Montparnasse tower, which is quite an ugly sight by itself but which features an unmatched view of central Paris, thanks to its height of 210m. From the top floor you can explore the various districts of Paris and its countless famous monuments, a good way to orientate yourself in preparation for your city touring.
In difference to the top of the Eiffel tower, where the large crowds will give you little time to enjoy the beautiful scenery, the Montparnasse tower sees usually only few guests and we spend easily an hour, learning about the various sights with the help of several media terminals.
Another advantage of the Montparnasse view is that you also get a good look at the Eiffel tower ๐
Over the next days we continued with short trips, focusing on one area at a time, giving us enough time to wander around and explore Paris’ many beautiful neighborhoods.
Montmartre, former artistic heart of Paris, now has a quite touristy reputation, but that shouldn’t discourage you from visiting it with beautiful white Sacre Coeur.
During the week of our visit was the big Climate Conference, which as we know now became an unexpected big success, and the conference was supported by several activities across town.
Of course we also explored the French cuisine, integral part of the French culture.
And for any Asian visitor, who can’t survive on French food alone, don’t be afraid. Paris has a big Chinatown with authentic Chinese and SE-Asian food!
We finished our Paris visit with a trip to Disneyland, as celebration of our wedding anniversary ๐
Staying at Disney’s own hotels is outrageously expensive, but luckily there are several excellent and cheaper hotels in vicinity of the resort with free shuttle service to train station and resort.
We had bought our tickets online in advance (much cheaper and faster than at the park entrance!) and ventured into the park at opening time. Not a lot had changed since my first visit more than 15 years ago, bringing back lots of memories.
Of course we visited all the big rides but also did a lot of smaller attractions – usually in company of hundreds of kids ๐
As you know, we are more the spontaneous type and usually don’t plan much in advance of a visit. However after reading about waiting times of one to two hours for many of Disneyland’s attractions, Yang Ke did a thorough research on how to optimize our visit and experience the most within our one day-only visit.
Well, turns out the researching was a total waste of time! The longest wait we had was 15min and mostly it was less than 5min. We could do all the rides available and did some several times. I even got convinced by Yang Ke to make time for the “charming” Frozen show
As part of Disney’s huge marketing campaign for the new Star Wars movie, they also had several Star Wars activities for kids. During our lunch break we got to see the “Star Wars Academy”, where kids could play a role in a battle with Darth Vader. Must have been pretty impressive for the kids!
In the late afternoon some rides turned totally empty and by 5pm we went home as we didn’t know what else to do (and it was getting cold)
If you are planning a visit to Disneyland however don’t expect the same level of emptiness. I think we were just lucky as several factors played together. Winter is generally low-season, we visited on a weekday (avoid Wednesdays as schools are off in the afternoon!), the weather was quite grey and cold and many tourists cancelled their trips after the Paris terror attacks.