Disneyland Paris

When Puan Mama Sarah and yours truly were planning our trip to Paris, we had not decided whether to bring the children to Disneyland, or not. Having arrived in Paris, and having visited most of the important sights we wanted to, we decided to complete our visit by also going to Disneyland. Furthermore, it'd be a huge treat for the kids.


We woke up early for the trip and thank goodness getting to Disneyland from Gare du Nord was not that difficult at all. It involved only a single change, and the rest of the trip was a breeze. Disneyland is literally infront of the last station.

Now, this is not my first time to Paris, or Disneyland, but it is the rest of the family's. The last time I went, it was definitely a blast and I wished to share that feeling with everyone else too.

Seriously, I didn't know who was more excited - the children, or the so called grown-ups. Decide for yourself by comparing Amar's and PMS' expression in the picture above. It was slightly unfortunately, however, that the weather was bland and it even rained - so I was too scared to use my camera ... much. Having said so, I still managed to capture around 500 photos - and looking at the photos just now, I wish I had taken much more!

Going to Disneyland in any other month is special enough, but going in October this year is even MORE special, due to a Haloween festivities special. The whole of Disneyland was re-decorated with a Haloween theme, and it looked beautiful and fun.

At certain scheduled intervals throughout the day, there would be events - singing, dancing and performances - such as pictured in the photo above. At that time, a big haloween pumpkin was being towed around, and many people dressed in pumpkin heads, witches and fairies were singing "It's Haloween" which added even more excitement to the already euphoric atmosphere. Predictably though, Sarah was scared stiff of the monstrosities and didn't want to get any closer than 100 metres to any of the performances.

Disneyland is divided into 5 zones - Fantasy land, Frontier land, Space Land, Adventure Land, and the Town Centre. Above is a picture of Frontier Land, specially modified for Haloween. The theme was of these pumpkin heads seeming to invade the Land causing all kinds of havoc. Statues of the pumpkin heads could be seen literally everywhere, as if in the middle of painting the Land orange for haloween.

Even the structures look slightly scary, so you could forgive that Sarah was completely scared! Imagine Sarah frozen in fear as a tall pumpkin head on stilts was passing by us.

Some of the children were dressed as in a haloween party. There were even staff all around for face-painting and hair-styling as you could see. Many children were dressed as witches and fairies.

This is the obligatory shot of the family in front of Cinderella's Castle (also the entrance to Fantasy Land). It was such a pity that I didn't have my tripod yet at that time as I was unable to include a picture of myself. Seriously, if I did have a tripod there would be many pictures of us as a family as well as lots of nightshots all around Paris.

It is a merchandise-shopping heaven in Disneyland. The streets are absolutely littered with shops and tiny stalls that sell everything Disney. We couldn't help but indulge...

At regular intervals, famous characters from Disney's classic fables appear on the streets to meet the children, very much to Sarah's delight of seeing characters she loves so much from her DVDs.

What was excellent was these characters happily posed for us taking photos, and gladly entertained the kids and signed autographs. Sarah managed to meet the witches from Snow white and Sleeping Beauty, tiger, mickey mouse, pluto and various others I don't care to name. To put it mildly, she was supremely thrilled.

Admission to Disneyland is around 45 Euros for each adults and our underage kids were admitted completely free of charge *big smile*. 95% of the rides inside of Disneyland is then free for all. The only thing is, there are always long queues for these rides ranging from 10 minutes to an hour. (Imagine waiting in queue with an impatient child for an hour!)

The one ride Sarah arguably enjoyed the most was the flying Dumbo. God darn it, I was scared stiff while Sarah was letting out squeals of excitement as our Dumbo was flying to the apex of the ride.

For Amar there was a relatively gentler ride - the Mad hatter's Tea Cup Ride :) In this ride we rode in over-sized teacups and the cups would gently spin round and round the track. The speed of the spin depended on how fast we could spin a metal plate that Sarah is seen holding in the picture above.

I sabotaged the ride by spinning the wheel as fast as I could, thank goodness Amar did not vomit! I took the opportunity to take panning and motion shots, hahaha. Hopefully it'd give viewers a sense of speed.





*ehem* sorry for the overdose of the Cup pictures. Now let's move on ...

Another ride that I enjoyed with Sarah was this boat ride around a large-ish lake around Frontier Land. Remember, most of the rides were free, including this one.

Sarah was treated with icecream ...

... after icecream ...

... after icecream ... and look at the expression of her finishing her treat! I've never seen her that enthusiastic, and that was after finishing a portion of chips. (We decided to let her, for the first time, drink coke - so that she'd have energy to last till the end of the day).

... while Amar settled on just Mickey Mouse shaped lollipops.

Now this is my absolute favourite of the whole series of an expert glass blower making a glass rose, as in the movie Beauty and the Beast. It was absolutely fascinating watching him delicately shaping the hot molten glass into beautiful shapes - ultimately forming the glass rose you could see on the left. The orange and blue fire also looks good in photos I opine.

We ended our visit at 6p.m. that day and Sarah and Amar seemed to have spent every ounce of their energy. They were sleeping soundly most of the train-journey back. Sarah was exulted from the all the rides, and not to mention all her new toys.

We had a great time.

A visit to Paris

It's now no longer a secret, and as some of you so psychically guessed (O-K guess it right to the place we're staying at, scary!) our family is currently enjoying a long overdue honeymoon in Paris. How we're so abruptly here in Paris is a long story, but to cut it short this was a holiday I originally booked for celebrating Eid in Malaysia. That explains why our holiday is strangely in the fasting month of Ramadhan. Instead of doing nothing in my already booked (and therefore set in stone) annual leave, we decided to make the most of it.

Please bear in mind that there are so many things to talk about about our journey that it would take volumes and volumes of entries, enough to even make DITH fold away her parasol and satisfy her reading hunger for months. Also, I took literally thousands of photos enough to tire even Ikelah's eyes.

I'll try and save you guys the time, and instead post what I unfortunately and arguably call the best of my photo collection:

No journey to Paris is complete without a photo of the Eiffel Tower, don't you think? I took this photo while on the night boat tour on the river Seine, it was around 10 pm. Sarah and Amar were long past their bedtime and before reaching this point we had to walk for miles in total confusion. Despite asking tens of people - no locals we asked had the tiniest clue how to take the boat tour!!? Later we found out that it was at Point Neuf. After waiting a 30 mins, we managed to board our boat and sat right at the roof. Paris lights up beautifully at night, but as you all know, night photography is extremely difficult - especially on a moving boat, with no tripod.

DITH et al, you guys may want to move on to the next photo/paragraph now: I am particularly proud of this photo as against all odds it turned out relatively sharp. And by "all odds" I meant a pitch black night, wind, a clingy 3 year old child, on a moving boat and without a tripod. The secret was I bumped the ISO to a whopping 1600 (for the fastest speed possible) and took tonnes of the same photo. I read on kenrockwell.com that camera shake is a random event, and the less probability there is to take a sharp photo the more you have to take so that odds are there'll be at least one that is sharp.

This photo was taken on the boat during the tour as the boat was passing one of the many bridges along the river Seine. I discovered that the best time to photograph the family was while the boat is passing a bridge as the people are wonderfully illuminated. As you could see from the photo, Amar is already asleep while the rest of us were trying hard to admire the scenery.

Was the tour worth getting lost late in the evening, with two sleepy little ones on a cold night and resulting in hundreds of mostly blurry night pictures? To me the answer is: No! However, the boat tour is arguably best experienced at night, when all the buildings light up.

This is a picture of Notre Dame, you know, the one with the Hunchback. This was one of the sights Puan Mama Sarah totally INSIST we see, and what a marvel of architecture this building is. It is one of the many absolutely wonderful places to visit as one travels along the river Sienne.

For those of you who don't know, along the river Seine lies many of the attractions of Paris including the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, Palace, The Muse de Louvre, Muse de Orley, and Notre Dame - to name but a few.

Crazy as I was (emphasis on "I"), I traversed most of the length of the river - starting from Notre Dame ALL THE WAY to the Eiffel Tower. I started at 11am, and finished an inch from death at 7pm. Was it worth it?

It was worth every step. All the attractions and scenery is so beautiful that at least that night I slept with a smile knowing I've seen most of them.

Above are some of the detailed and beautiful statues near the Invalides and palace. The Invalides is where they have Napoleon's grave/coffin. From the Invalides one could already see the Eiffel Tower looming in the background, and I was foolish enough to think "oh, then the tower must be near". Several hours later by foot, I realised my mistake.

One of the many parks in Paris. I love this picture for it's autumn overview. Notice as well the cafe hidden by the foliage in the background. Paris is littered with Cafes such as these and throughout the day many people could be seen in these outside cafes, enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend while watching life goes by ... how I wish I could do the same with Puan Mama Sarah ... any volunteers to look after our kids?

Sarah was such a trooper. It surprised me how this girl who only recently graced the age of three managed to walk the distance she has covered the past few days. I totally feel sorry for her, and I know she must be shattered. One sad scene was on the train back to our hotel and the train was absolutely packed with people that Sarah and I had to stand. Sarah fell asleep while standing! ... and she became more or less unrousable for the next 4 hours. Thank goodness when she fell asleep we were only 1 stop away from the hotel.

We were sure to reward Sarah with plenty of sweeties and icecream. And speaking of icecream, the icecream and sorbet we have tasted so far in this country is the ABSOLUTE BEST I HAVE EVER TASTED, ever! EVER! Prior to this I have only heard that you could get delicious icecreams in Paris. It is not until I've tasted one that I truly know what "delicious" actually means.

Seriously though, the extremely creamy texture and the explosion of flavour is just absolute bliss.

(urm, but please note that the best icecream I have tasted before is probably only Haagen Dasz)

Sarah, overlooking the river Seine. This is on the bridge extending across just outside of Muse de Orsey. Going along the river Seine reminds us so much of Cambridge for the numerous bridges that (for lack of a better word:) straddles the river. All of the bridges are of a unique design, enough to make a bridge-spotter like me truly very happy indeed.

What I hate though (and this extends to all of Paris we've seen so far) is the UTTER LACK of push-chair-friendliness. Ramps and lifts are rare and difficult to find, and poor us had a miserable time carrying the kids as well as the blimming chair down hundreds of steps!

This is one of the Bateux Mouches or simply "boat" in English (I think). It is on one of these did we "enjoy" our night tour. It only moves at around 20 miles per hour (don't ask me to convert that to knots or parsecs, please) but fast enough for us to admire the landscape. Tours run every hour or so until around 11pm. It costed us 10 euros for each adult, but the children went free :)

This is one of the Metro lines or "underground" as they call it in the U.K. The system is almost 100% the same, with the same slightly confusing map. One of the differences though, is that some the trains are double-decker. Cool!! I love the above picture for the curved, sweeping lines :)

This picture is of us waiting for a Metro train to arrive. It was quite difficult with two little ones, and as I have mentioned before, escalators, lifts or ramps are difficult to find making transporting the little ones quite a nightmare. However, the trains are very frequent and always, we barely had to wait 4 minutes before one arrived. The underground .. whoops ... Metro system is also relatively easily understandable and we had it figured out within only a couple of minutes.

I included the above picture just to show you guys how a French train looks so different from a UK train.

Now to a topic I love: food. Simply put, the desserts in Paris - the Creme Broullet, the Profiteroles, the sorbets, the ice creams, the crepes, the tarts and all other patisseries are some of the best I have ever tasted in my life ... ever so far. I am not exaggerating.

Puan Mama Sarah enjoying her Creme Brulee.

As an example of how delicious the desserts are take the above fruit tart. Despite feeling absolutely chock-full after dinner, I finished the whole tart after just wanting to try "one taste".

Well, I'm sorry for not including enough relevant pictures but to do so would mean flogging my blog with hundreds of pictures. I also hope that I've written enough for DITH to read. So far, our adventures are not yet over, we have one day left before we head home and boy do we have things planned tomorrow :)

See you guys soon! That is, if I survive the coffee overdose. I am currently indulging myself with all sorts of coffee and hot chocolate in all of the different cafes. And Moby, the coffee here is even better than our favourite "non-specific" coffee-bucks. Err, some types that is. Still nothing beats a frapucc-non-specific-iced-coffee or a macchiato in my opinion.