We had another super busy week! After returning from Cuxhaven, we only had two days at home before we left on our next adventure. Matt and I caught up on work and things around the house, Brooklyn wrapped up her summer class, and Ryan kept working hard on completing his Lego Star Wars AT-AT.
I worked a half day Wednesday while Matt took the car for an oil change. We left early in the afternoon for Paris to catch some of the Olympics and to visit Disneyland Paris. We originally had tickets for a soccer match on Wednesday afternoon, but we were delayed in leaving and did not make it. It was a small blessing, though, because we had a great evening, stopping in Reims on the way for dinner and not having to battle the Paris crowds for one more day.
Reims is such a great city, and I love it more every time we stop by. It has a great walkable city center with many dining choices and great vibes. We got dinner from Ryan’s favorite French restaurant, Pitaya, and had a short walk around town.
We got to our hotel at Disneyland Paris by 7 pm and were a little worried at first to see the parking lot filled with police cars and hundreds of armored police walking around. We wondered what could have happened: a terrorist attack? We quickly realized that our hotel was actually where many out-of-town national police officers were staying during the Olympics. They were all working the night shift and preparing to head onto duty in Paris. We always travel cautiously, but coming to the Olympics gave us a little more anxiety. However, staying in this hotel full of police definitely made us feel a lot safer.
We were up bright and early for breakfast on Thursday morning and immediately onto the shuttle to take us to Disneyland. We had tickets to Rugby in the afternoon so we decided to spend the morning in the smaller Disney park, Walt Disney Studios.
Walt Disney Studios is meant to be similar to Hollywood Studios in Orlando, focusing on the Pixar characters. The park is going through a lot of renovations, though, so it felt much smaller than its already small size, and the remaining open rides were mashed together without a lot of logic. Finding Nemo rides were right in the middle of Cars Land, and Toy Story rides were next to Avengers rides. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s definitely a departure from the classic Disney attention to detail.
We spent the morning riding as many rides as possible and had ridden most of them by noon when we had to leave to get the train into Paris.
Disneyland Paris’ train station is right at the park exit, so it’s super convenient for getting into the city. It was about an hour from Disney to St. Denis stadium in North Paris. Then, we walked in the huge mass of people making their way from the train to the stadium, almost 30 minutes away.
We arrived just as the first match was starting. We were watching Rugby Sixes, a scaled-down version of regular rugby. The teams only have six men on the field at a time, and each match is made of two seven-minute halves, with a five-minute half-time in between.
We did not really expect to enjoy ourselves at the matches and thought it would be more of us checking a box for going to the Olympics while watching a sport we didn’t know much about, but we all agreed it ended up being really fun! The stadium atmosphere was really electric, and rugby is a cool sport to watch. It’s a little like American football, but with no pads or timeouts. These athletes are totally brutal with each other. We learned their goal is to get a “try,” which is what we would call a ‘touchdown,’ and instead of tackles, they have “scrums” which are pretty much huge pig-piles of men. The best part is when they quickly build pyramids out of players really tall in order to get high enough to intercept passes.
We got to watch six matches over the afternoon, including the US V. Honduras, France V. Fiji, Australia V. Argentina, and New Zealand V. Ireland.
One interesting thing to note is that no alcohol is being served at the Olympics, although non-alcoholic drinks are available. This definitely led to a calmer atmosphere in the stands.
After a long metro ride, we finally made it into Central Paris. We attempted to get close enough to the Eiffel Tower to see the Olympic rings, but the entire Champs du Mars and Trocadero Square were blocked off in preparation for the Opening Ceremony the following day. The closest we could get was off to the side of the entrance. We took some photos and then went in search of dinner.
We found a cute restaurant, Le Piquet, with an open table outside and had the best dinner!
Of course, I had French Onion soup, despite it being a pretty hot summer day, and deep-fried truffle Mac and cheese; it was so good! Brooklyn and Matt had burgers, and Ryan had fish and chips.
We took the hour train ride back to our hotel. It was mostly uneventful, except while boarding the train, a crazy person thought Brooklyn was pushing her, and the lady pushed Brooklyn off the train and yelled “F*** You!” at her. Luckily, another passenger caught her before she fell into the gap. Brooklyn wasn’t hurt or scared and took the whole incident calmly. Matt tried to say something to the girl who pushed her once the train was moving, and she said, “It wasn’t me!” even though we clearly watched her do it. We were seriously just so confused about the whole thing but ended up laughing about it most of the end of the trip. That person was obviously having a rough day. Oh well, it could have been much worse! We returned to the hotel pretty late and went to bed immediately.
Friday was our final day in Paris, and we woke up to rain. However, we still had big plans for Disneyland that day. Luckily, it mostly misted in the morning and then fully stopped for a few hours after lunch.
We spent the whole day walking around riding rides, and the lines were short enough that we were just about able to ride all of them, even the “baby” ones.
Now that we’ve been to Disney World Orlando, Disneyland California, and Disneyland Paris, I feel like we are in a good position to make a few comparisons. First off, the ticket prices are slightly lower in Paris than the US parks, coming in at about $95 per day, although we were able to snag some discounted two-day tickets a few days before our visit. There are also no magic bands here, and while I know a lot of people who love planning and love the system, I don’t. I don’t want to be tied to such a rigid schedule, and without the wristbands, we could do whatever we wanted at that minute. The food was also much more affordable, and we could get four full meals for less than €70. They also sell wine and beer. While the Magic Kingdom parks in the US are “dry parks,” several drink stands were set up throughout the park, each themed for a different region of France, where you could have wine or beer local to that region. And lastly, the lines were so much shorter. European schools have only let out just this week, and we visited on weekdays. So while that probably had something to do with it, we also came during the Olympics when you would think it would be its most crowded. Overall, it was a much more favorable experience.
By around 6 p.m., we had ridden almost every ride and had our fill of Disney. And it was starting to pour. We returned to the hotel, had dinner, and then went back to our room to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony. We had planned to go into central Paris to watch it live, but as we watched people soaking in the rain, we felt we 100% made the right decision.
Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then immediately got on the road to head home. Ryan was departing for summer camp in Croatia Saturday night, and we had to have him back in time to catch the bus.
We arrive home by mid afternoon where we found a flooded laundry room again! Seriously, this is just a regular thing for us. We got it cleaned up and were able to get everything washed up and Ryan repacked for a week at camp. He departed on the bus at around 9:30pm and arrived on Sunday for a full day of fun!
On Sunday, the rest of us slept in and then Matt took advantage of the beautiful weather and went golfing with a friend.
Brooklyn and I headed into downtown Stuttgart and visited Stuttgart’s main art gallery, Staatsgalerie. I was pretty surprised by the art collection as it had many famous artworks by Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Andy Warhol, and more. We walked around for a couple of hours with Brooklyn explaining several of the pieces that she studied last year in Art History.
After the art museum, we had Thai food for lunch at Kwan Kao nearby.
We finished off the day by running errands and catching up on things around the house. I love the weekends we soak up every second away on an adventure, but it was great to have an extra day before returning to work to prepare everything for the week ahead. We are looking forward to a low-key and relaxed week ahead!
Gilcrests Abroad 