Heading Into Paris

Thursday 31st January 2008 dawned cold and frosty. I sneaked a look out of the hotel window and shivered.

We had decided to have a day in Paris itself and, given that we had already spent a day in the Disney Studios and another in the Disneyland Park itself and given further that it was our last full day in France, there was no choice but to pull on the woolly hat which had tried all of its own accord to emulate Mickey's ears all week.

We started off by catching the free shuttle to the Disney Village and railway station. Then in mine bestest French I managed to secure day passes for the trains to include the metro and buses in Paris. These are called Mobilis tickets although it's a different ticket for a two-day pass. The train terminates at Marne la Vallée station, so it came in one way, we got on, and it left again in the direction it had come from. We swapped seats to face forward and settled down. As we stopped at the various stations the train started to fill up. A young woman sat opposite us and pulled out a Nintendo DS and that kept her happy for a full half hour until she got off. "If you'd have brought yours, you could have linked!" I said to Fran.

We went around 17 stations to Charles de Gaulle Étoile where we swapped to another line and headed for the Eiffel Tower. We got on the Metro train, where I saw a poster and my French was just about enough to realise the station we wanted was closed. We had to go past it to the next one and then walk back. It was cold, but very sunny and so it wasn't an unpleasant walk. It took us around 15 minutes to get to the Tower that we had decided we were going to go up! And so we shall - in the next article!

The Disney Village

Monday 28 January 2008. After checking into the hotel and unpacking what needed to be unpacked we caught the shuttle bus to the Disney complex.

In the centre of the complex is Marne la Vallée railway station and the bus station is just next to it. Then if you imagine four quarters radiating around the centre there is Disneyland in one quarter, Disney Studios in another, the Disney hotels and service area in another and the Disney Village adjacent to the hotel area.

The Village contains a row of shops selling almost exclusively Disney goods, restaurants and bars and nightclubs.

We had been on the go all day and just wanted something to eat that was fairly quick and uncomplicated so we went into Annette's Diner and had a burger meal. Annette's is a fun place and the food was good. The burger I had came with lots of sliced mushrooms and it was cooked a little less than an English or American burger would have been - the French like their steaks medium or even rare and tend to recoil in horror at those who like it well done! The more you cook steak the less tender it gets so I have to agree with them.

Anyway in a burger, there was a tendency for it to fall apart so it was definitely a knife and fork job! There is a steak restaurant, a Bavarian castle themed restaurant and Wild Bill's Wild West Show with music, cowboys and indians, knife throwers and a small herd of buffalo going by the photos. We thought about it one night but decided against it in favour of the steak restaurant.

After food it was a look around the shops. It all starts to go hazy after this point and I vaguely remember staggering out once the close proximity to so many soft toys became too much.

I walked the length of the Village, which doesn't take all that long, and took a few photos.

Once Fran had had enough of shopping it was dark and cold and we walked down to have a look through the gates at the two parks (they close at 6 o'clock during the winter) and made our way back to the bus station to catch the shuttle back to our hotel. We had decided that the next day would be spent in the Disney Studios.

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