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Paris Roundup and Euro Disneybland

So, all in all, Paris was a blast. We had a great time shop­ping — On Sun­day, Angie and I vis­ited the local Museum of Mod­ern Art (saw the largest pigeon in the world), and then the whole fam­ily con­verged and had a great time vis­it­ing the Amer­i­can Church in Paris (cute con­tem­po­rary ser­vice in the after­noon on Sun­day (woot):

While we were headed to the church, Angie and I got on the train and this guy jumped on after us to share his music:

I have to admit, this is prob­a­bly the coolest look­ing French dude I’ve ever seen.

Inspired by the museum, Angie and I made a com­men­tary piece on Abbey Road for her first album:

So … mov­ing right along — we got to Monday:

First I had an AMAZING run for 6.05 miles … I ran from the hotel at 6:30am, through the city, which was empty:

…at which point i got lost … but finally found the river Seine…

…and headed for the dis­tant point of my run…

…lis­tened to alter­na­tive music the entire time…

then ran back to the hotel for a total of 6.05 miles. Sadly, I was unaware of how long a 10k run is (6.2 miles) … had I known, I would have clocked the extra thou­sand feet … but I missed the turn on that one and well — I ran a 9.6k in Paris (there’s always Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and Sar­dinia to make it up).

Soo… once I got back, stretched down, got ready — it was time to go to Disneyland!!!!

The kids and I headed out on the train through the very col­or­ful and beau­ti­ful Metro:

and then got on the R. E. R. — which is a sub­ur­ban train that heads directly to Disneyland.

Whilst on the train, we met a bunch of very excited and funny Irish girls (we’re from Lim­er­ick, have ye been there? It’s much bet­ter than Dublin. You should come and visit!). They too were headed to Dis­ney­land — ready for the rides and stuff, here’s a pic­ture of them:

Dis­ney­b­land

So, what did we think of the place?

…it was ok…

…but we still fig­ured out how to have fun on our own…

I’d say the biggest hangup with Dis­ney­b­land is that it’s run by Euro­peans, mainly French. That’s not actu­ally a hit on them — I think there’s some­thing about the “over the top happy” thing that is uniquely Amer­i­can — and they just don’t get it. It’d be like get­ting the nuance of singing an ancient national bal­lad in French … only the French could sing it with the depth and total affect that is needed — an Amer­i­can might do a decent cover — but could not get the absolute impact.

So it goes with Dis­ney­b­land — they all could care less that you’re there … that’s obvi­ous — that’s France. “Wel­come to Dis­ney, what do you want?” But more impor­tant — they just don’t get the joke, ya know? Dis­ney­b­land — the sul­len­est place in the world (what do you mean by that?).

Aside from one guy on the tower of death drop, who was slightly col­or­ful, there was not a sin­gle giant smile in the place — they couldn’t be both­ered with such effort — for the sake of what? Don’t you know that life is empty and mean­ing­less — have you not read Sartre? Are you not aware that Exis­ten­tial being deems us all to be await­ing our own demise with no hope for the future — like empty bub­bles of point­less hope in a river of heart­less objec­tiv­ity? — would you like grand frites with that? Please, keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times — not that it really mat­ters — noth­ing really mat­ters, does it?

We went on a bunch of decent enough rides — since rides don’t need to really be trans­lated (well, the Star Wars “expe­ri­ence” was a lit­tle less fun because it was all in French) — but oth­er­wise — they are all just roller coast­ers after all. We went on a tower drop like the one in Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios. We went on Space Moun­tain: Mis­sion 2 (twice!). We went on an Aero­smith roller coaster, which was pretty ran­dom … I mean — let’s also go on a NY Mets roller coaster, or per­haps a Don­key Kong roller coaster … Aero­smith? Just sort of out there, imho (it was in the Dis­ney Stu­dios park — which is their pass­ing homage to Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios park in Cal­i­for­nia). The rides them­selves were pretty fun, once you slogged through the emo­tional despair that is French service.

But we did actu­ally have a good time — Nate started to melt down at the end because we were all a bit tired (did I men­tion my run in the morn­ing?) … but over­all — we had a decent time strolling around the grounds, and in a bizarre way, sort of enjoy­ing the true magic of Dis­ney by wit­ness­ing its absence in this faux place.

(Final obser­va­tion — not a decent char­ac­ter to be found in Dis­ney­b­land. All the sad sec­onds and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters live there. Their rock­star is Rata­touille — pri­mar­ily because he’s French, after all … but yeah, folks like THIS GUY:)

But the ULTIMATE exam­ple of how much the French miss the beat — it would have to be the “parade” through main street. Here’s the video. Mind you, you’ll have to live through the jostling video — but note a few things:

1 — most of the food shacks are closed (we can­not be both­ered with serv­ing you food, we are French, we sit, we smoke — move along)
2 — the expres­sions and demeanor of the peo­ple in the red jack­ets (who I believe used to work for the Secret Police prior to work­ing at Dis­ney­b­land)
3 — the music … the shrill, des­per­ate sounds of the French try­ing to sound happy
4 — the clear and unadul­ter­ated lack of vis­ceral response in my oth­er­wise happy Amer­i­can kids
5 — the length of the parade as com­pared to the ones in Dis­ney­land USA, which are vast
6 — as a ref­er­ence, I give an exam­ple at the end of how it SHOULD be going — because I’m Amer­i­can, I’m wired for it

[Note: this is a large video, so it may need to stream, click it — poke at it — it’ll even­tu­ally work]

and finally … I posted an album of Euro Dis­ney­b­land pic­tures on Face­book — it’s a pub­lic album, you don’t need Face­book to see it (calm down Pat (shout out to Pat)).

MUSIC!!!!
We got back to the hotel at about 8:30, and Nate was flip­ping out because we orig­i­nally had planned to get up at 5am for an early flight to Rome (Kathy resched­uled the flight — we’re leav­ing at 2pm now) … and he was really miss­ing his bud­dies at home, and his Legos.

I wan­dered out to get some food — found a street crepe the size of my head, but threw it away after the first bite because the “freshly cooked” chicken was actu­ally cold (scary).

At some pass­able sashimi (they don’t know how to do sushi, really — they just have salmon and tuna and serve it in the same plas­tic con­tain­ers that we get sushi in the supermarket)

…and then the music started…

*boom*boom*boom*boom — frenchyfrenchyfrenchy­BOOM — bom­pi­ty­boom­pi­tyscratch­scratch *boom*boom*boom (repeat)

Ya see — it’s “Music Fes­ti­val” time! (Joy).

What this con­sists of is a lot of ran­dom places around Paris just play music very loud — the French all come out in their “rock and roll cloth­ing” and stand around being cool to music. That’s cool … except that some Bistro around the cor­ner from our hotel decided they needed to be the loud­est place in the entire world — all night long.

Well… I could go into how that sat — but basi­cally, we waited until who knows when and the music ended. We got some sleep, and here we are — it’s the AM … we’re headed to Rome — things are going well … the kids are sleep­ing in … and we’re pretty happy.

Next stop — ROMA!